Missing Links Problems and Participation in Collective Decisions

在这个项目中，主要研究人员将探讨如何共享元知识的成员获取信息影响参与集体决策，以及参与率如何影响性能的缺失环节的问题。当只有一小部分关键信息只有一个或几个人知道，而集体绩效取决于这些人提供关键信息时，就会出现缺失链接问题。此外，其他人需要将信息的有效性和能力归功于信使。 建议的研究是由这样的想法，分配发言的机会是一个社会协调问题。 参加小组讨论的人数不平等是一个特点。 有些成员比其他成员参与得更多。 现有的证据表明，外向，占主导地位，口头上容易参与，但这些特征通常与知道更多或拥有专业知识无关。 使问题更加复杂的是，高参与者往往被他们的同龄人认为是最有能力和最有知识的。 因此，经常参加的成员被视为有能力的，这有助于维持他们的高参与率和提高他们的影响力。 为了有效地协调参与，成员需要有效和突出的线索来协调发言机会的提供和接受。研究人员将对研究缺失环节问题的小组进行五项研究，并重新分析从领导力培训机构获得的一组档案数据。 元知识的明确性和完整性将是多种多样的，研究将采用几种类型的任务：估计问题，犯罪之谜，定量推理问题。 在这些研究中，关键信息将提供给一两个成员;这套关键信息对于适当整合所有成员拥有的信息是必要的。 此外，在几项研究中，小组将解决几个具有类似结构的缺失环节问题，并在每个问题后获得绩效反馈。 目标是评估参与分配和集体绩效是否随着在稳定任务环境中共同工作的经验而改善。除了集体绩效指标外，调查人员还将记录成员参与的频率以及他们提供的信息。 参与者也会互相评分？参与程度、任务相关知识和能力以及完成集体任务后的影响力。 在更广泛的影响方面，这项研究将确定提高群体在决策中考虑和使用关键信息的能力的条件。 决策失败的编年史通常将沟通和整合一组关键信息的失败确定为一个促成因素？用通俗的话来说就是“没能把这些点联系起来”“比如说，没能预防的？内衣炸弹客2009年圣诞节登上从阿姆斯特丹飞往底特律的航班，被归咎于未能在情报界传播炸弹手父亲和英国情报部门的信息。 这是一个缺失链接问题的例子。 拟议的研究将确定条件下，任务相关的知识，而不是外向性和社会优势，决定谁的贡献，谁是有影响力的。 由于小团体经常在政府和组织中做出重要决策，因此建议的工作对从识别恐怖主义威胁到预防灾害到解决设计和技术问题的广泛应用中的决策有效性具有影响。拟议中的研究将奠定概念和经验基础，设计干预措施，减少失败的机会，以检测缺失的环节，在小组的决定。

In this project the Principal Investigators will explore how shared meta-knowledge about members' access to information affects participation in collective decisions and how participation rates affect performance on missing links problems. Missing links problems arise when there is a small set of critical information that is known to only one or a few and collective performance depends on these people contributing the critical information. Moreover, others need to ascribe validity to the information and competence to the messenger. The proposed research is guided by the idea that allocating speaking opportunities is a social coordination problem. Participation in group deliberations is characteristically unequal. Some members participate more than others. Existing evidence suggests that the extraverted, dominant, and verbally facile participate frequently but that these traits are not typically associated with knowing more or having expert knowledge. Compounding the problem, high participators are often judged by their peers to be the most competent and knowledgeable. Thus, members who participate frequently are seen as competent which serves to sustain their high rates of participation and enhance their influence. To coordinate participation effectively, members need valid and salient cues to orchestrate the provision and acceptance of speaking opportunities. The investigators will conduct five studies of groups working on missing links problems and reanalyze one set of archival data obtained from a leadership training institute. The explicitness and completeness of meta-knowledge will be varied and the studies will employ several types of tasks: estimation problems, crime mysteries, and quantitative reasoning problems. In these studies, critical information will be given to one or two members; this set of critical information will be necessary to integrate properly the information that all members have. Additionally, in several of the studies, groups will solve several missing link problems with similar structures and receive performance feedback after each problem. The goal is to assess whether participation allocation and collective performance improves with experience of working together in a stable task environment. In addition to collective performance measures, the investigators will record how frequently members participate and what information they contribute. Participants will also rate each others? levels of participation, task-relevant knowledge and competence, and influence after completing the collective tasks. In terms of broader impacts, this research will identify conditions that improve the ability of groups to consider and use critical information in making decisions. Chronicles of failed decision making often identify as a contributing factor failures to communicate and integrate a set of critical information ? in everyday vernacular "failures to connect the dots." For example, the failure to prevent the ?underwear bomber? from boarding a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day, 2009, has been attributed to the failure to disseminate information from the bomber's father and British intelligence within the intelligence community. This in an example of a missing links problem. The proposed studies will identify conditions under which task-relevant knowledge, more than extraversion and social dominance, determine who contributes and who is influential. Because small groups often make important decisions in government and organizations, the proposed work has implications for decision making effectiveness across a wide range of applications from identification of terrorist threats to the prevention of disasters to solving design and technical problems. The proposed research will lay the conceptual and empirical groundwork for designing interventions that reduce the chances of failures to detect missing links in small group decisions.