THE ROLE OF SOCIAL ANXIOUSNESS IN GROUP BRAINSTORMING

The authors predicted that individuals high in dispositional anxiousne ss would perform poorly when brainstorming in groups but not during so litary brainstorming. Experiment 1 demonstrated this result in a compa rison of groups of 4 that were all high or all low in interaction anxi ousness. In groups with 2 low-anxious and 2 high-anxious individuals, the low-anxious individuals lowered their performance in the direction of the high-anxious individuals. These results suggest that part of t he productivity loss observed in interactive brainstorming groups may be due to the inhibited performance of individuals who are uncomfortab le with group interaction. Moreover, these individuals may influence o thers in the group to lower their performance in line with that inhibi ted performance level. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the poor perform ance of socially anxious groups in interactive brainstorming is not de pendent on whether group members have individual microphones or share 1 common microphone.