[The productivity of electronic brainstorming: a comparison of three systems with a control]

Some studies have indicated that the brainstorming in a computer-mediated meeting can be effective. Accordingly, an experiment was conducted to investigate relative effectiveness of three electronic brainstorming systems, compared with a control, and find cognitive variables that mediated its effectiveness. One hundred undergraduate women, in groups of four, participated in the experiment. The number and quality of unique ideas generated by electronic brainstorming groups of three presentation systems: random, sequential, and sequence-emphasized, were compared with those of a nominal group. Results indicated that the three brainstorming groups were higher than the control, in terms of originality of generated ideas. Also, the possibility was suggested that pleasure in task performance mediated the originality effect of electronic brainstorming.