Planning and Performance in Small Groups: Collective Implementation Intentions Enhance Group Goal Striving

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Organizational Behavior
• Group Dynamics

Background:

• Group performance is influenced by individual motivation and group dynamics.
• Two key motivators for group performance are indispensability (crucial contribution) and identifiability (recognition by others).
• Indispensability promotes collective goals ('We' goals), while identifiability promotes individual goals ('I' goals).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how collective ('We') and individual ('I') goals, facilitated by specific implementation intentions, influence group performance and interaction strategies.
• To examine the role of cooperation and communication in the effectiveness of collective implementation intentions (cIIs) versus individual implementation intentions (IIs).

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using a physical persistence task with three-member groups.
• Groups formed either collective or individual goals, followed by planning using collective implementation intentions (cIIs), individual implementation intentions (IIs), or control plans.
• Experiment 2 manipulated communication to test its role in the effectiveness of cIIs.

Main Results:

• Both cIIs and IIs improved performance on the persistence task compared to control groups.
• Groups using cIIs exhibited higher levels of cooperation during the task than groups using IIs.
• Hindering communication significantly impaired the performance of groups using cIIs, but not IIs, highlighting the importance of communication for cII effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• Collective goals, planned with cIIs, rely on and foster cooperation, making them sensitive to communication.
• Individual goals, planned with IIs, are less reliant on cooperation and communication for performance enhancement.
• The study provides a psychology of action framework for understanding small group performance, emphasizing the distinct mechanisms of collective versus individual goal pursuit.