TACIT COORDINATION IN ANTICIPATION OF SMALL-GROUP TASK COMPLETION

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.