MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES IN GROUPS

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Abstract
An experiment was designed to test hypotheses concerning rate of psychological oversatiation among group members working on a repetitive group task as a function of characteristics of their groups. The group characteristics considered were those presumed to affect the difficulty of decision in setting goals for the tasks. The main hypothesis was that satiation will set in less rapidly on going from first to last of the following treatments: (A) Subjects work with strangers and do not set goals; (B) subjects work with strangers, receive no information about performance, receive no information about others' goal-setting; (C) subjects work with strangers, receive no information about performance, are told there is strong disagreement in goal-setting; (D) subjects work with strangers, receive no information about performance, are told there is strong agreement in goal setting; (E) subjects work in cohesive groups, receive information about actual performance times, are told strong agreement exists in the way the group sets goals. The results indicated that treatments A through E significantly affect degree of satiation (as well as difficulty of decision) in the order predicted. Additional data demonstrated that the treatment variations affect group treatments were found, both with level of goals set by subjects and with measures of time and accuracy of performance. A supplementary experiment revealed that intermember communication can create uniformity of satiation level within a group, either in the direction of raising the level or lowering it.

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