Interesting post in PsyBlog, looking at a 1985 study which found that groups have a tough time making good decisions. The blog sums up the study as follows:

The findings were relatively straightforward and, as is often the case with decision-making research, another blow for the fragile human ego. They found that people trying to make decisions in groups spend most of their time telling each other things that everyone already knows. In comparison people are unlikely to bring up new information known only to themselves. The result: poor decisions.

Sounds counterintuitive, notes PsyBlog — why would anyone hold black and not share information known only to them? But to me, the study forces another good question. If the principle often holds true, what does this mean for online collaboration, the thing that drives so many enterprise 2.0 projects?

One approach the savvy social-techie might take is to design the collaborative environment to break down the barriers to sharing good stuff. PsyBlog lists three possible causes for this collective inhibition:

1. Memory. Shared information is likely to be more memorable in the first place, so more likely to be brought up by someone. Also, if more people in a group know a piece of information, whether because it’s memorable or for some other reason, then there is a greater probability that one of them will recall it in the discussion.

3. Anxiety. Before a meeting people are unsure how important the information they know is, and are also anxious to be seen in a good light by others in the group. Information that emerges during a meeting as shared by the group comes to be viewed as more important and so people repeat it. People are seen as more capable when they talk about shared rather than unshared information (Wittenbaum & Bowman, 2004). To be on the safe side people prefer to stick to repeating things that everyone knows and, bizarrely, others like them better for it.