Search

The extent to which groups are creative has wide implications for their overall performance, including the quality of their problem solutions, judgments, and decisions. To further understanding of group creativity, we integrate the motivated information processing in groups model (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008) with work on epistemic social tuning (Lunn, Sinclair, Whitchurch, & Glenn, 2007). Three propositions were advanced: (a) Groups produce more ideas when members have high rather than low epistemic motivation, especially when members also have a prosocial rather than pro-self motivation; (b) these ideas are more original, appropriate, or feasible when a group norm favors originality, appropriateness, or feasibility; and (c) originality is valued more in individualistic cultures (e.g., the Netherlands), whereas appropriateness is valued more in collectivist cultures (e.g., Korea). Four studies involving 3-person groups generating ideas supported these propositions: Epistemic motivation (mild vs. intense time pressure; presence vs. absence of process accountability) stimulated production and originality, especially when prosocial rather than pro-self motives were present and participants were Dutch or originality norms were experimentally primed. When appropriateness norms were primed or participants were Korean, epistemic motivation stimulated production and appropriateness, especially when prosocial rather than pro-self motives were present. We discuss implications for research on group processes and for work on culture and creativity. Keywords: creativity, groups, information processing, motivation, innovation DOI: 10.1037/a0019386

We used social information processing theory to examine the effect of work-family conflict (WFC) at the work group level on individuals' experience of WFC. Consistent with hypotheses, results suggest that WFC at the work group level influences individual WFC over and above the shared work environment and job demands. It was also observed that work group support and demographic dissimilarity moderate this relationship. Moderator analyses suggest that work group social support buffers WFC for individuals but is also associated with a stronger effect of work group WFC on individuals' WFC. Moreover, the work group effect on individuals' WFC was shown to be stronger for individuals who were demographically dissimilar to the work group in terms of sex and number of dependents. The interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed. Keywords: work--family conflict, work groups, social support, similarity, social information processing DOI: 10.1037/a0017885

This study examined children's peer information processing as an explanatory mechanism underlying the association between their insecure representations of interparental and parent-child relationships and school adjustment in a sample of 210 first graders. Consistent with emotional security theory (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994), results indicated that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were indirectly related to their academic functioning through association with their negative information processing of stressful peer events. Insecure interparental relationships were specifically linked with negative peer information processing patterns that, in turn, predicted increases in child maladjustment over a 1-year period. These pathways remained robust after taking into account the roles of representations of parent-child relationships, trait measures of child negative affect, and socioeconomic characteristics as predictors in the analyses. Keywords: family, children's representations, peer information processing, school adjustment DOI: 10.1037/a0016688

Information sharing is a central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources. The authors used meta-analysis to synthesize extant research on team information sharing. Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups = 4,795; total N = 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration. Although moderators were identified, information sharing positively predicted team performance across all levels of moderators. The information sharing-team performance relationship was moderated by the representation of information sharing (as uniqueness or openness), performance criteria, task type, and discussion structure by uniqueness (a 3-way interaction). Three factors affecting team information processing were found to enhance team information sharing: task demonstrability, discussion structure, and cooperation. Three factors representing decreasing degrees of member redundancy were found to detract from team information sharing: information distribution, informational interdependence, and member heterogeneity. Keywords: group, information sharing, information sampling bias, hidden profile, information processing

Previous distance-related theories and concepts (e.g., social distance) have failed to address the sometimes wide disparity in perceptions between leaders and the teams they lead. Drawing from the extensive literature on teams, leadership, and cognitive models of social information processing, the authors develop the concept of leader--team perceptual distance, defined as differences between a leader and a team in perceptions of the same social stimulus. The authors investigate the effects of perceptual distance on team performance, operationalizing the construct with 3 distinct loci: goal accomplishment, constructive conflict, and decision-making autonomy. Analyzing leader, member, and customer survey responses for a large sample of teams, the authors demonstrate that perceptual distance between a leader and a team regarding goal accomplishment and constructive conflict have a nonlinear relationship with team performance. Greater perceptual differences are associated with decreases in team performance. Moreover, this effect is strongest when a team's perceptions are more positive than the leader's are (as opposed to the reverse). This pattern illustrates the pervasive effects that perceptions can have on team performance, highlighting the importance of developing awareness of perceptions in order to increase effectiveness. Implications for theory and practice are delineated. Keywords: teams, leadership, social perception, collective cognition

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.01.002 Byline: Erika M. McElroy (a), Christina M. Rodriguez (b) Keywords: Cognitive risk factors; Child physical abuse risk; Discipline style; Behavior problems; Child maltreatment; Social information processing model Abstract: Utilizing the conceptual framework of the Social Information Processing (SIP) model (), associations between cognitive risk factors and child physical abuse risk and maladaptive discipline style and practices were examined in an at-risk population. Author Affiliation: (a) Colorado West Regional Mental Health Center, Child & Family Division, 515 28 3/4 Road, Building A, Grand Junction, CO 81501, USA (b) University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA Article History: Received 22 June 2006; Revised 24 November 2007; Accepted 15 January 2008 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This study was supported by the Barbara and Norman Tanner Graduate Fellowship for the Prevention of Violence and was funded by a University of Utah Faculty Research and Creative Activities Grant. This project was completed as a doctoral dissertation in partial fulfillment of doctoral requirements.

Social interaction is a central feature of people's life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relation between mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study i using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people's lives. Keywords: cognitive performance; socializing; mental exercise; social intelligence; executive function; group living

Cognitive experiential self-theory (CEST), which maintains that information can be processed in both an experiential (emotional) and a rational mode. Experiential processing fosters a reliance on heuristic cues. Previous research has demonstrated that juror verdicts are influenced by a variety of extralegal heuristics, including a defendant attractiveness cue. This research examined whether experiential processing would produce a defendant-attractiveness/leniency effect. Before awarding monetary damages in a civil trial, participants were motivated to think either rationally or experientially and were shown a photograph of either a high- or low-attractiveness defendant. Experiential mode participants awarded significantly lower damages to the plaintiff when the defendant was attractive, but the attractiveness-leniency effect was not operative for rational mode participants.

Three experiments examined how change in minority size influenced information processing and attitude change. Experiment 1 showed that when strong rather than weak arguments were presented, a message attributed to an expanding rather than shrinking minority elicited more issue-relevant thoughts and more related attitude change in the argued direction. Experiment 2 showed more related attitude change in the argued direction when it was unlikely that expanding size was due to the shifting majority members' self-interest. Experiment 3 replicated these findings. In addition, results indicated that change in size interacted differently with the majority than with minority status of the source: related issues remained largely unaffected in the case of majority support, whereas expanding minorities elicited more related attitude change in the argued direction.

Research suggests that adolescents employ logic and emotion in processing media messages. Gender schema theory argues that gender roles are internalized by adolescence; gender should thus affect information processing. This study exposed 578 ninth and twelfth graders to eight alcohol-related messages. Boys found individualistic messages in alcohol advertising more persuasive and memorable, and girls were more persuaded by collectivist messages in public-service announcements. The findings suggest that gender should be incorporated in models attempting to understand how adolescents analyze messages.

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of communication on both learning and recall/retrieval in transactive memory systems within groups. Results allow the authors to offer an interpretation of why groups that collaborate at the time of recall remember less than nominal groups. Further, the study supports the notion that as researchers obtain a better grasp of small group communication processes, they obtain a fuller understanding of groups as information processors.

It is hypothesized that perceptions of entitativity (i.e., seeing social targets as possessing unity and coherence) have important implications for how one organizes information about, and forms impressions of, individual and group targets. When perceivers expect entitativity, they should form an integrated impression of the target, resulting in on-line judgments. However, when perceivers expect little entitativity, they should not process target-relevant information in an integrative fashion: resulting in memory-based judgments. Although many factors affect perceptions of entitativity, the current study focused on expectations of similarity and behavioral consistency. It was predicted that in general, perceivers expect greater entitativity for individual than group targets. However, when explicitly provided with similar expectancies of entitativity, information processing would be similar for both individual and group targets. Two experiments supported these predictions, using recall, memory - judgment correlation, and illusory correlation measures.

Anticipated interaction has different cognitive repercussions, depending on whether one expects to belong to a majority or minority as well as on the size of the opposing group. Members of minority factions who expect to interact with the majority show increased overall cognitive activities compared to the majority factions who expect interaction with a minority. For both minorities and majorities, a larger anticipated opposing group stimulates more bias toward information supporting one's own position. The control group, without information about factions, acts like a four-person majority facing a two-person minority.

A study of three-person groups to discuss a homicide mystery revealed that decision-making groups perform well if expert roles are assigned to its members but forewarning the members about their specific area of information is not useful. The coordination and processing of unshared information depends upon the members' recognition of their specific areas of information. In case the members do not have specific roles, there is a possibility of omission of one individual's information from the discussion.

A review of the social information processing (SIP) literature reveals that researchers have neglected to discriminate among the various mechanisms of social influence that affect SIP. The concepts and structural models of social network analysis suggest alternative mechanisms for social influence exposure. These mechanisms include simple interaction contact, norm enforcing cohesive groups and structurally equivalent positions within an interaction structure. The proposed mechanisms are tested and compared as to their ability to predict similarities in perceptions and attitudes regarding organizational phenomena. The results indicate that while norm enforcing groups exert the most social influence, all three contagion mechanisms operate in varying degrees for different perception variables, sometimes simultaneously.

This paper offers a theory of quotation by uniting two apparently disparate extant theories, Recanati's pragmatic theory and Washington's identity theory. Recanati draws a distinction between open and closed quotations, and contends that open quotations do not refer. Washington argues that closed quotations refer to various expression types, not just orthographic and/or phonetic types. By combining these views, this paper proposes a theory, according to which quotations, open or closed, may be tokens of semantico-physical types (i.e., meaningful expressions), and while those types are mentioned (or referred to) by closed quotations, they are used in open quotations.

For moral guidance we human beings may be tempted to turn toward the past (scripture, tradition), toward present science, or toward future consequences. Each of these approaches has strengths and limitations. To address those limitations, we need to consider how these various perspectives can be brought togetherand 'religion and science' is an area in which this may happen. That makes the question of where to look for guidance potentially a central one for religion and science, setting the agenda differently from apologetic questions with respect to religion or to science. However, 'religion and science' does not solve the issues, leading to a single normative perspective; the way that current knowledge is integrated with past wisdom is highly dependent upon ideals that relate to the future. Thus, rather than resolving the need for guidance, the religion-and-science conversation becomes one way of addressing our need for guidance, bringing into the conversation past, present, and future.

An online information processing model is developed.

The effects of epistemological beliefs and topic-specific beliefs on undergraduates' cognitive and strategic processing of a dual-positional text were investigated. Forty undergraduates thought aloud while reading a text that presented information both consistent and inconsistent with their prior beliefs about the HIV-AIDS relationship. Epistemological beliefs about the speed of learning affected the overall number of cognitive processes exhibited, whereas topic-specific beliefs interacted with the nature of the information read to influence the specific type of cognitive processing used. Strategies for accepting or resolving apparent ambiguities in text were related positively to delayed recall; cognitive processes for developing awareness were related negatively to the number of distortions produced.

This study investigated whether the White racial identity statuses proposed by J. E. Helms (1984, 1990, 1995) could explain individual differences in how racial stereotypes influence memory for race-related information as measured by memory sensitivity and response bias on a recognition memory task. Participants were 197 White undergraduate and graduate students who read 3 stimulus paragraphs embedded with Black and White stereotypical items. The race of the target character in the stimulus was randomly reported to be Black or White. After a 1-week interval, participants completed a measure of recognition memory, as well as a measure of White racial identity attitudes. Results offer support for the hypothesis that the White racial identity statuses influence how racial stereotypes affect information processing.