Team Communication Unpacked: The Role of Endogenous Communication Processes On Team Decision-Making Outcomes

• In Event: Online Experiments: Methods, Opportunities, and Challenges

Abstract

Scholars are increasingly interested in how the processes of team communication – or moment-to-moment changes in how information is sent, received, and interpreted – influence team performance. Process data are notoriously difficult to capture, often requiring invasive recording devices and time-consuming hand coding of data, and ignoring the endogeneities and interdependencies inherent in team communication. Online experiments promise to alleviate many of these challenges, enabling the unobtrusive and comprehensive monitoring of team communication, and allowing unprecedented levels of experimental control over emergent communication patterns. In this presentation we discuss the results of a series of online team decision-making experiments, designed in the hidden profile paradigm of team research, and hosted on the Massively Open Online Science Experiment site VolunteerScience.com. We explore the features of VolunteerScience.com, and identify how conducting experiments online specifically enabled manipulations on communication processes, including the use of automated agents (bots) as “confederates” to experimentally control endogenous communication patterns and isolate how emergent team communication patterns influence intermediate and final decision making outcomes. By leveraging online experiments, this research advances teams research by offering insights into how the endogenous processes of communication and decision making affect team performance.

Authors

• Brooke Foucault Welles, Northeastern U

• Christoph Riedl, Northeastern U