The Effects of Team Member Distribution and Accountability on a Brainstorming Task

Abstract

The current study investigates the effects of physical distribution of team members and accountability of individual outputs on brainstorming performance. Teams were asked to generate as many uses for a knife as they could in a 12 min period. Participants included 103 undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses. A 2 (distributed vs. face-to-face) x 2 (accountable vs. non-accountable) analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect of accountability and a significant interaction. Individuals in face-to-face accountable teams generated the fewest ideas. These results are interpreted in terms of “evaluation apprehension” and “social loafing.”