Using Relative Confidence Judgments to Evaluate Group Effectiveness

The performance of groups can be greatly influenced by their ability to identify their best member. This study investigated this issue in the context of a quantitative judgment task. Relative confidence judgments were used to determine the extent to which group members were able to identify their best member. The effectiveness of groups was also compared across three experimental conditions that varied in terms of the specific instructions group members were given about the group discussion. Results indicate that group members were often able to identify the most accurate member even though the judgment task did not have a demonstrable solution. Groups were also at least as accurate as their best member nearly 40% of the time. The group process intervention that encouraged group members to try to determine the most accurate individual judgment fared better than the intervention that focused on intraindividual accuracy rankings. Groups in this condition also showed the strongest correspondence between identifying the best member and performing at this level. Groups assigned to an unstructured group discussion condition performed nearly as well as those assigned to the more successful of the two interventions.