Committees, focus groups, and self managed work teams have become permanent fixtures in many organizations. Reliance upon small groups in our society can be attributed in part to the pervasive belief that groups outperform individuals working alone. The power extended to small, decision making groups is especially interesting when viewed in light of the research exploring group and team efficacy. An extensive research literature supports the notion that group performance is frequently superior to individual performance, but recent findings suggest that groups can also increase the likelihood of error under certain circumstances. In our program of research we have demonstrated that for some decision making tasks, incorrect minorities can sway correct majorities toward their preferred incorrect alternative (e.g., Tindale, Smith, Thomas, Filkins, Sheffey, 1996.) In using the notion of a shared task representation, we have been able to predict when groups will perform better or worse than individuals working alone. With the proposed research we will attempt to generalize our findings to new domains, define the origins of shared representations (i.e., culture, ideology) and how these representations operate in the various contexts in which groups make their decisions. Our ultimate aim is to devise ways with which we can reduce the potential biasing effects of shared representations.
