Not all cognitive
collaborations are equally effective. We tested whether friendship and
communication influenced collaborative efficiency by randomly assigning
participants to complete a cognitive task with a friend or non-friend, while
visible to their partner or separated by a partition. Collaborative efficiency
was indexed by comparing each pair’s performance to an optimal individual
performance model of the same two people. The outcome was a strong interaction
between friendship and partner visibility.
Friends collaborated more
efficiently than non-friends when visible to one another, but a partition that
prevented pair members from seeing one another reduced the collaborative
efficiency of friends and non-friends to a similar lower level.
Secondary
measures suggested that verbal communication differences, but not
psychophysiological arousal, contributed to these effects. Analysis of
covariance indicated that females contributed more than males to overall levels
of collaboration, but that the interaction of friendship and visibility was
independent of that effect.
These findings highlight the critical role of
partner visibility in the collaborative success of friends.
Below: Bird’s eye view of the four experimental conditions (friendship X partner visibility)
Full article at: http://goo.gl/sis50y
By:
Allison A. Brennan
Department of Psychology, Simon
Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
James T. Enns
Department of Psychology,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv_insight
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