Gm. Wittenbaum et al., TACIT COORDINATION IN ANTICIPATION OF SMALL-GROUP TASK COMPLETION, Journal of experimental social psychology, 32(2), 1996, pp. 129-152
Group members may tacitly coordinate their actions by predicting other
s' behaviors and adjusting their own behavior accordingly to meet the
perceived demands of their collective task. Subjects read and recalled
political candidate statements while anticipating either a group deci
sion-making or collective recall task. When anticipating collective re
call, they remembered more statements about topics outside of other me
mbers' expected expertise, whereas they recalled more statements assoc
iated with others' expected expertise when anticipating group choice.
In a follow-up study, the bias toward duplicating others' expected exp
ertise under a choice set occurred when participants anticipated discu
ssion followed by private choice but not when they anticipated having
to satisfy an explicitly assigned group decision rule. These results a
re discussed in terms of a model of anticipatory tacit coordination. (
C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.