Suchergebnisse

In a laboratory experiment subjects worked on two case problems using one of five different strategies. The first problem required subjects to generate ideas to solve the problem (idea generation phase), whereas subjects were given a standardized set of alterna tives to solve the second case and asked to select the best alterna tives (idea evaluation phase). Results suggested that the more the problem-solving strategy approached one of an individual work ing alone, the greater the number of "good" ideas generated. In idea evaluation, the interactive strategies did not differ from each other in terms of decision quality. Group performance was inferior to the best individual working alone and approximated the level of the average individual working alone. Reasons for process losses were discussed.

This study examined expectations of cognitive conflict, social conflict, decision confidence, and postdecision group affect in the dialectical inquiry, devil's advocacy, and consensus decision-making techniques. Expectations show some congruence with the affective, but not objective, outcomes found in prior empirical studies. Expectations were found to discriminate among dialectical inquiry, devil's advocacy, and consensus.