Introduction to Groups:Process losses

Agenda1. Groups are valuable.

a. Groups often do better than the individual in them. They allow people to handle projects that are too large or complex for a single individual.

2. The success of a group consists of three components: a. Getting the work doneb. Supporting the needs of individual membersc. Keeping the group as an unit functioning.

3. Much groups research adopts a functionalist perspective, trying to identify inputs & process that help groups succeed.

4. Groups often perform worse than optimal. Afflicted by "process losses", which prevent them from doing as well as they are capable of doing:

a. Problems in coordinationa. Brainstormingb. Shared information bias

b. Problems in motivationa. Social loafingb. Group think

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Criteria for Group Success

1. The success of a group consists of three components: a. Production: Getting the work done & meeting

needs of stakeholdersb. Member support: Supporting the needs of

individual membersc. Group maintenance: Keeping the group as an

functioning unit and developing it with time and experience.

2. These components can be in tension

What were the criteria for success in the rowing crews?

Functionalist Perspective

• Normative approach that seeks to identify the inputs to groups and the group processes cause groups to be more or less successful.– Groups are goal oriented– Both group behavior & performance can be evaluated– One can control group interactions to make them more

appropriate for achieving group goals– Other factors (both internal & external) influence group

performance through group interaction

• “Normative” means that there are better or worse ways to organize groups to achieve the goals for which they were formed.

Traditional Input-Process-Outcome Model of Group Effectiveness

Forsyth, D. (2010). Group dynamics (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub Co.

Input Process Output

The tension in group work

• Groups are valuable: Perform better than the individuals who comprise them

• But they rarely live up to their potential = Process losses.

KnowledgeSkillsAttitudesTimeEffort

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Process losses

Coordination• Production blocking: members can

not think of new ideas while listening to someone else

• Common knowledge effect: discussions focus on shared information

• Unequal participation: participation expertise

• Coordination costs of– Scheduling– Developing consensus– Doing the work

Motivational• Social loafing: members expend less

effort• Conformity pressures & group

think: members feel pressured to agree with other group members. Effects strongest with cohesive groups.

• Conflict: interpersonal conflict is disruptive

• In-group vs. Out-group bias: Mere group membership leads to in-group favoritism.

• Escalation of commitment: groups persist in following a course of action despite evidence against it

Coordination process loss:Brainstorming in interactive groups

Alex Osborne’s Rules for Brainstorming (1953)

• No criticism• Defer criticism.• Encourage the wild

– Wild ideas may trigger more practical suggestions from others

– It is easier to tone done crazy ideas than to be creative• The more the better

– The more ideas, the greater likelihood of one winner– It is easier to eliminate than to generate

• Build off of others– Combinations and improvements are welcome– How can you improve what others offered?– Can you get creativity from combinations?

Osborne, A. F. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative problem solving. Charles Scribener’s Sons, New York.

Process Loss in Brainstorming

Real, interacting groups (versus nominal ones) produce

Fewer ideas Fewer good ideas Lower average quality Lower feasibility

Lit review: 18/22 studies show nominal groups surpass real groups (Diehl & Stoebe, 1987)

Fixes depend on causes

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Number of ”good” ideas produced by interacting and nominal 4-person groups discussing how to improve relationships among Germans & guest workers (Diehl & Stoebe, 1987)

Possible explanations

Explanation Solution

Possible explanations

Explanation• Conformity pressures• Social loafing• Production blocking

Solution

Anonymity

Surveillance systems

Simultaneous input

Disentangling causes• Diehl & Stoebe (1989): 5 experiments to identify

importance of causes– Evaluation apprehension: High (Your ideas on controversial topic

recorded & judged) vs Low (no recording & judgment)– Social loafing: Personal (each person compared) vs Collective (group as

a whole is compared) to a standard– Production blocking: High (Stoplights prevented subjects from producing

ideas when another subject was producing) or Low (no lights)

• Production Blocking was the main problem– Brainstorm at home & use group meeting to consolidate

• Other techniques to enhance brainstorming– Take a break– Brainstorm within categories– Division of labor

Coordination process loss: Common knowledge effects

Hidden profiles & shared information bias

• One reason groups succeed is that together members have more knowledge than any single member

• Yet groups – Over-discuss information held by all members– Under-discuss information held by a subset of members

• Often leads to worse decision-making than if group shared all their information

Sample Coordination Problem: Lack of Information Sharing

• Team members have some shared & unshared information about a candidate – all positive

• If they use all the information, the choice is clear. Pick candidate with most positive attributes

• But if they share only some of the information, choice may be wrong, depending on what is shared

Information sharing determines quality of group decision-making• If they combine all the information, A dominates B

• But partial sharing can lead to wrong decision

Stasser, G., & Titus, W. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48optional, 1467-1478.

Shared information

• More likely to be mentioned (d=2.03, k=33)• Will be discussed more• More likely to be remembered• More influential in decision-making

By not talking enough about information held only by a subset of members, group is not taking advantage of one of a group’s primary asset

Lu, L., Yuan, Y. C., & McLeod, P. L. (2012). Twenty-Five Years of Hidden Profiles in Group Decision Making A Meta-Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(1), 54-75.

Failure to discuss all the information leads to worse decisions

• Odds of a correct answer were 8x larger when all group members had all the information than when only a subset of members had some information

Moderators

• Hidden profiles led to less info sharing when:– Groups were larger– When there was more

information overall– When more of the initial

information was unique• No effects:

– Communication media

• Hidden profiles led to worse decisions when:– Groups were larger– When there was more

information overall

How to fix the problem

Doesn’t help• Increase discussion• Separate review & decision

stages• Increase team size• Poll before discussion

Helps• Group interaction:

– Explicitly ask for unshared info– Have recognized

specialization (i.e. roles)– Build group trust

• Structure the decision– Consider alternative one at a

time – Rank, not choose– Suspend initial judgments– Approach task as “problem to

be solved” not “judgment”

Coordination reflected in participation rates

• Uneven distribution in groups

• Unevenness increases with group size

Example of coordination loss in Wikipedia

Generally articles with more editors have higher quality

But coordinating large numbers of editors could be a process loss

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Coordination types

• Explicit coordination– Direct communication among editors planning and

discussing article

More process loss• Implicit coordination

– Division of labor and workgroup structure– Concentrating work in core group of editors– Development of group norms

Less process loss

Predicting changes in Wikipedia quality

Longitudinal Analysis: What leads to changes in quality

Predicting Changes in Article Quality

Coef. SE PIntercept .304 .033 ***Initial Quality -.146 .005 ***Article Age -.006 .004# Editors -.020 .003 ***Editor Concentration .600 .038 ***Editors X Concentration .216 .020 ***Quality X Concentration -.222 .035 ***Age X Concentration -.041 .028# Talk Edits .087 .004 ***Editors X Talk -.010 .002 ***Quality X Talk -.001 .003Age X Talk -.003 .003

More Talk & Concentration Improve Article Quality

• Effect of number of editors disappear, when examining change in quality at average levels of talk & concentration

Longitudinal Analysis: What leads to changes in quality

Predicting Changes in Article Quality

Coef. SE PIntercept .304 .033 ***Initial Quality -.146 .005 ***Article Age -.006 .004# Editors -.020 .003 ***Editor Concentration .600 .038 ***Editors X Concentration .216 .020 ***Quality X Concentration -.222 .035 ***Age X Concentration -.041 .028# Talk Edits .087 .004 ***Editors X Talk -.010 .002 ***Quality X Talk -.001 .003Age X Talk -.003 .003

Effects of communication depends on number of editors

Direct communication is effective with small number of editors, but harmful with many editors.2

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High editor communication Low editor communication

By number of editors and amount of communicationPredicted change in quality

Longitudinal Analysis: What leads to changes in quality

Predicting Changes in Article Quality

Coef. SE PIntercept .304 .033 ***Initial Quality -.146 .005 ***Article Age -.006 .004# Editors -.020 .003 ***Editor Concentration .600 .038 ***Editors X Concentration .216 .020 ***Quality X Concentration -.222 .035 ***Age X Concentration -.041 .028# Talk Edits .087 .004 ***Editors X Talk -.010 .002 ***Quality X Talk -.001 .003Age X Talk -.003 .003

Effects of Number of Editors Depends on Concentration

• Concentration helps overall– Helps most with when many editors contribute– Many editors without concentration harms quality

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High editor concentration Low editor concentration

By number of editors and editor concentrationPredicted change in quality

Motivational process loss:Social Loafing

Social LoafingRINGLEMANN’s Discovery (1913) • A French agricultural engineer who conducted most of

his research in late 1880’s. • Device measured the exact mount of forced exerted

on the rope• 1, 2, 3, or 8 people pulling on rope• Force didn’t increase

linearly with the number of people

Social Loafing: RINGLEMANN (1913)

• Mean force pulled by individuals = 85.3 kg of force

• Eight people should produce (8*85.3kg) or 682.4 kg of force, but really produce less than half

` Why?

Distinguishing Coordination Problems from Motivation

Nominal or co-acting groups. Subjects think they are in the presence of a group, but in fact acting alone

motivation

Real (or collective) groups need to shout at the same timecoordination

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Social Loafing: Working in a group decreases effort

• Social loafing occurs in both interacting and nominal groups

• Across many performance outcomes– Physical– Intellectual– Quantity– Quality

When is social loafing reduced?

Loafing reduced in cohesive groupsBrainstorm uses of a knife.Place ideas into

– Separate boxes (coactive)– Common box (collective)

Group cohesion– High Cohesion: Prior pleasant

interaction– Control: No conversation– Low Cohesion: Prior

argumentative interaction.

Social loafing occurs– In no history control group– In low cohesion group– Eliminated in high cohesion

group

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Karau, S. J., & Hart, J. W. (1998). Group Cohesiveness and Social Loafing: Effects of a Social Interaction Manipulation on Individual Motivation Within Groups. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 185-191.

People even work harder in a cohesive group when they think teammate has low ability

• Subject performs a brainstorming task• Vary individual vs. collective work

• Individual: Put ideas in separate boxes• Collective: Put ideas in common box

• Vary group cohesion• Friends vs strangers

• Vary perceived ability of others in groups• Low: “I’m lousy at this type of task”• High: Irrelevant comments or “I’m generally

good at this type of task”

• Social loafing results:• With low-ability partners, social loafing occurs in

non-cohesive groups, but reduced in cohesive groups

• With high-ability partners, social compensation occurs in cohesive groups, but not in non-cohesive groups

Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1997). The effects of group cohesiveness on social loafing and social compensation. Group Dynamics, 1(2), 156-168.

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Karau & Williams Meta-Analysis

Meta-Analysis – Way to systematically combine evidence from many studies by

averaging effect sizes– Effect size = power of variable of interest in standard deviations

units

Karau & Williams result– 163 effect sizes– 123 of 163 studies show evidence of social loafing

• People working harder in coactive conditions than collective conditions

– Mean effect size = .44 standard deviations (moderate)

Analyze average effect size & test for heterogeneity

Illustrating Average Effect Size

• Difference of .44 standard deviation units btw effort when individuals are working independently (co-acting) versus pooling output (collective)– Small to moderate effect size– 66% of people in collective group would exert less effort than averager person in

the co-acting group – Comparable to difference in height between 14 year old & 17 year old girl or the

difference in reading or math tests of 4 th graders vs 5th graders or reading differences between 12th grade girls vs boys

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Test for moderator variables

Factors that mitigate social loafing

Social loafing reduced if• Individual's output is visible

• Task is attractive

• Group is attractive

• Expect others to perform poorly

• Own contribution is unique

• Task is simple

• Task has specific, challenging goals

• Among women

• Among people from collectivist culturesKarau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706.

Stylized facts vs causal theory

Expectancy-Value Theory (Vroom)

Individuals will work hard in groups to the extent they believe:– effort will lead to better performance– better performance will be recognized

and rewarded– the rewards are valuable

Quasi-economic model

Individuals work hard to the extent that doing so increases personal payoffs

You study hard (effort) – If you enjoy the topic (intrinsic motivation)– You have a test (individual performance) – You ace the test (individual outcome) – You are proud & get praise from parents (evaluation of outcome)

Utility model of individual motivation

individual effort

individual performance

individual outcome

motivationindividual utility

Valance of outcomex

Collective Effort Model (Karau & Williams)

• Being in a group– Changes probability of group performance– Changes probability of individual outcome– Changes valence of the outcome

Number of othersOwn competenceOwn unique skillsGroup’s incompetence

Liking for group membersIdentification with groupHistory of interaction with groupPersonal importance of goal

IdentifiablyDivisibility of outcomeFairness of reward distribution

individual effort

individual performance

individual outcome

motivation

group performance

group outcome

individual utility

Valance of outcomex

Scenario• You are member of a 6-person team to select a Wikipedia

article & improve it to good article status• How do you guard against social loafing?

Ways to reduce social loafing

• Assign fewer people to work on tasks (“understaffing”)

• Assign individual responsibilities• Make individual performance visible• Define clear, stretch goals• Make the tasks intrinsically interesting• Make the group enjoyable to work in