How Much Group is Necessary? Group-To-Individual Transfer in Estimation Tasks

Abstract

Hardt G-I transfer denotes an increase in individual performance due to group interaction, for example, because of acquiring certain skills or knowledge from the other group members. Whereas such G-I transfer has been successfully shown for problem-solving tasks, evidence for G-I transfer on quantitative estimation tasks is scarce. We address this research gap with a focus on how often a group has to interact in order to fully exploit the benefit of this learning effect. Results from two experiments support the idea that a single group interaction is sufficient to induce a stable G-I transfer, which reduces group members' metric error. Smaller metric errors indicate that people improved their representation of the correct upper and lower boundaries, or what range of values is plausible. In contrast to nominal groups, both members of continuously interacting groups and members of groups with only one initial interaction exhibited stable G-I transfer, and the size of this transfer did not significantly differ between the latter two conditions. Furthermore, we found evidence for differential weighting of group members' individual contributions that goes beyond sheer individual capability gains under certain circumstances, namely in tasks with a population bias.

Multiple Team Membership, Performance, and Confidence in Estimation Tasks

“…It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that the social support for one's views is carried over and amplified in MTM contexts. On the other hand, in a recent empirical study using estimation tasks, individuals improved their performance after a single exposure to the group (Stern et al, 2017) and, in line with this evidence, we would expect that MTM is actually taxing on the confidence of the individuals in their own judgments. We, therefore, formulate the last hypothesis concerning the impact of MTM on changes in confidence as a set of competing claims.…”

“…Such a fostering effect for individual learning is likely to be a reflection of the G-I transfer of learning. Therefore, we build on the G-I transfer of learning (Brodbeck and Greitemeyer, 2000) to argue that individual members use the other group members as information sources and during the group discussion they develop more accurate insights into the estimation tasks and, as a consequence, they improve their individual performance (Stern et al, 2017). In line with this model, if individuals are exposed to more groups, they have access to broader cognitive resources, to more meta-cognitive strategies for dealing with the task, and therefore the G-I transfer of learning is fostered in MTM contexts.…”

“…Not supported in the G-I transfer of learning and show that the quality of individual estimates increases after group members discuss the tasks in a single group or in multiple groups. This may be due to having acquired better strategies to tackle the task following group interactions [i.e., meta-knowledge (Hinsz, 2015)] and or due to the exposure to multiple information sources (Stern et al, 2017) and acquiring more metric (i.e., knowledge about the scale a target is measured on) and mapping knowledge (i.e., knowledge about the position of specific targets on a scale) (Lippold et al, 2021). By engaging in task conversations with members of the groups who possibly hold different perspectives on the task at hand, individual group members are likely to experience (internal) cognitive conflicts.…”

G-I transfer in multicue judgment tasks: Discussion improves group members’ knowledge about target relations.

“…Importantly, groups benefit from discussion beyond the aggregation of their members’ judgments. There is mounting evidence that group judgments are more accurate than the simple average of a comparable number of individual judgments, that is, group interaction leads to synergy in quantitative group judgment (e.g., Minson, Mueller, & Larrick, 2018; Schultze, Mojzisch, & Schulz-Hardt, 2012; Sniezek & Henry, 1989; Stern, Schultze, & Schulz-Hardt, 2017). Recent research suggests that the main process driving the superiority of group judgments is group-to-individual transfer (G-I transfer), a group-specific learning effect that denotes increases in group members’ individual accuracy due to exchanging task relevant information during discussion (Schultze et al, 2012; Stern et al, 2017).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, only one previous study investigated G-I transfer with regard to mapping and metric knowledge (Stern et al, 2017). The results of this study showed that group members improved their metric knowledge during discussion, but found no evidence of improvements in mapping knowledge.…”