Collective Induction Without Cooperation? Learning and Knowledge Transfer in Cooperative Groups and Competitive Auctions

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology Vol. 92; no. 5; pp. 854 - 870
• Main Authors: Maciejovsky, Boris, Budescu, David V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-05-2007
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Auctions; Biological and medical sciences; Competitions; Competitive Behavior; Cooperation; Cooperative Behavior; Decision Making; Developmental psychology; Feedback, Psychological; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Group behaviour; Group Dynamics; Group performance; Group Processes; Groups; Human; Humans; Individual performance; Inductive Deductive Reasoning; Information transfer; Interpersonal Interaction; Interpersonal relations; Knowledge; Knowledge transfer; Learning; Male; Motivation; Probability Learning; Problem Solving; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social conflict; Social Identification; Social interactions. Communication. Group processes; Social psychology; competitive auctions; cooperative groups; knowledge transfer; collective induction; reasoning errors; Human; Bidding; Social group; Decision making; Cognition; Knowledge transfer; Learning; Acquisition process; Social interaction; Cooperation; Communication
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.854

There is strong evidence that groups perform better than individuals do on intellective tasks with demonstrably correct solutions. Typically, these studies assume that group members share common goals. The authors extend this line of research by replacing standard face-to-face group interactions with competitive auctions, allowing for conflicting individual incentives. In a series of studies involving the well-known Wason selection task, they demonstrate that competitive auctions induce learning effects equally impressive as those of standard group interactions, and they uncover specific and general knowledge transfers from these institutions to new reasoning problems. The authors identify payoff feedback and information pooling as the driving factors underlying these findings, and they explain these factors within the theoretical framework of collective induction.