EXPERT ROLES AND INFORMATION EXCHANGE DURING DISCUSSION - THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING WHO KNOWS WHAT

Whereas decision-making groups can benefit from pooling members' uniqu e knowledge, they often do not benefit because information that is hel d by only one member is omitted from discussion (Stasser, Taylor, & Ha nna, 1989b). However, if members are assigned expert roles, they may b e able to implement a cognitive division of labor that promotes the sa mpling and use of members' unique knowledge. Participants in this stud y read a homicide mystery and then met in three-person groups to discu ss the case and select the guilty suspect. A group collectively had al l the clues, but each member read a version of the mystery that contai ned only a subset of the clues that were critical to identifying the c orrect suspect. Groups were more likely to select the correct suspect and mentioned more of the unshared clues when members were told who in the group had additional information about each suspect. However, sim ply forewarning individual members that they would receive more inform ation about a specific suspect did not have these beneficial effects. These results suggest that adequate collective sampling of unshared in formation depends on coordinated information processing which is based on members mutually recognizing each other's responsibility for speci fic domains of information. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.