This research advances understanding about how the processes of conflict resolution and expression can lead to innovation in science and engineering. Much innovation is due to bringing together multidisciplinary teams to solve complex cross-disciplinary problems; such teams are thought to be able to generate more novel solutions than single disciplinary teams. However, such teams are plagued by problems in communication and coordination. This research examines how particular patterns of conflict resolution and expression can be associated with eventual engineering team innovation success.
Intellectual Merit: The project integrates three very different literatures: social psychological studies of team conflict and cohesion; cognitive psychological research on analogy, mental simulation, and uncertainty; and the literature on long-term marital success to determine what interaction patterns surrounding conflict result in successful versus unsuccessful long-term relationships. Prior research has typically studied these variables in isolation. To know how to intervene to increase engineering output in long-term, multidisciplinary teams, the relationships between these must be understood. The project examines a large existing audio-video dataset collected from 48 undergraduate multidisciplinary engineering teams, whose eventual products ranged from poor to competent to innovative.
This project has several merits: the integration of different literatures to better understand team processes, external validity in teams engaged in multidisciplinary engineering design, different teams with a variety of outcomes, and detailed, observable process data unpacking the ?black box? of innovation.
Broader Impacts. The US is facing serious challenges in the fields of science and technology and with the current economy. Multidisciplinary teams are vital to solving complex national problems but often fail to live up to their promise. Innovation must be harnessed to create employment opportunities, generate novel products, and spur long-term economic growth. The flourishing of science and engineering teams should be examined with the same rigor as other important human endeavors. This project also has implications for engineering education. As specific, observable warning signs for later innovation or failure to innovate are discovered, suggestions for pedagogy can be formulated based on empirical findings.
Innovation in engineering and science, when successful and enjoyable, is a seemingly miraculous phenomenon. Multidisciplinary teams, in particular, are called upon to solve complex cross-disciplinary problems but are plagued by problems in communication and coordination. The aim of this project was to examine, in fine detail, the interaction of multidisciplinary student engineering teams working on semester-long engineering product design. Some of their projects resulted in patents and/or fulfilled challenging client requirements in a novel fashion, while others struggled. This project combined subdisciplines of psychology, drawing on social, organizational, and cognitive psychology as well as literature on what types of disagreements result in healthy marriages. In addition, this project took advantage of and further developed a pre-existing audio-video dataset of engineering product design conversations. The major tasks of the project were to transcribe and quantitatively code (assess) 37.5 hours (over 45,000 separate clauses/utterances) of student engineering design team conversations for both cognitive and social psychological variables. These variables included brief disagreements, the emotion related to the disagreement, uncertainty, and analogy use. The data were analyzed using a variety of statistical modeling techniques. Initial findings have been presented at international conferences. For instance, counter to expectations, disagreements about process problems led (positively) to positive affect being used in subsequent speech, but overall patterns of negative and positive emotion within the disagreements were unrelated to final team success. This project also saw the completion and initiation of several offshoot ventures. Related research on team expertise, disagreement, analogy use, and uncertainty from a separate dataset (expert scientists working on the Mars Exploration Rover mission) has been published in top cognitive psychology journals, as have two methodological papers on how to assess and quantitatively analyze real-world conversations. This project also saw the initiation of a collaboration with a computational linguistics/artificial intelligence lab to create algorithms for speeding up the coding of uncertainty and other social factors. The PI will continue to analyze and write up her findings from this dataset. The results have been disseminated at international and cross-disciplinary conferences, and the funding period of this grant (2 years) saw the publication of 9 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Future researchers can also build off this dataset to explore additional features associated with engineering design processes and success. The work with the computational linguistic lab will benefit other researchers seeking to assess large datasets, Further, this project involved the mentoring and training of 23 undergraduate students, including members of underrepresented groups, and it has already resulted in a publication for a graduate student who has been deeply involved in the research. By examining the factors associated with multidisciplinary science and engineering team innovation and healthy functioning, this project examines topics vital to the functioning of science in our society.
