Science, as an endeavor, is more dependent on group, rather than individual, effort. It isn’t the solo scientist, working on a problem in isolation, that makes the big breakthroughs, but a lab full of scientists cooperating on a problem and reciprocally sharing their research with other labs, that pushes the boundaries of knowledge forward.
Because of that fact, as a high school science teacher, I had my students usually working in groups. To help them prepare, I used a tabletop exercise showing how different styles fared against each other in tackling the same problem.
Each student was asked to solve a problem solo and then was put into a small group which solved the same problem working together. The individual solutions, as well as each group solution, were afterward compared to an ideal solution. Scores were assigned based on how close each came to the ideal. The scores of all members of a group were averaged together and then compared with the group’s single one.
If the group’s final solution scored lower than the average of their individual scores, it meant they had performed more poorly, working together, than as a random group of people, each working alone. If higher, it meant that working together had produced a positive result. The question I posed to them was: what style of problem-solving made the difference?
While allowing for the predictable presence of occasional outliers, the trend line in the data we gathered showed a higher success rate for those who worked out the problem by the use of consensus.
Groups that allowed one member to dominate, with few exceptions, were lowest on the line. This group problem-solving process fell victim to what is called “expert bias.” Groups that deferred to the opinion of an overbearing member who claimed to know best, were led into errors of judgment regarding the solution. The telltale sign of this was when many of the individual scores in a group were higher than the one finally agreed upon, but one person had a perfect match to that low-scoring solution, indicating the others had made a decision to accept that person’s solution as their group’s.
An opposite situation was sometimes discovered when the best match to a group’s high-scoring solution was found belonging to only one individual, but someone who was generally a quiet participant and needed encouragement to share their ideas. That group had taken the time to listen to each other’s opinion, and one member, who otherwise might not have been heard, helped the group achieve a higher score.
In some instances all the individual scores were lower than the group score. The members of that group had started with limited personal understanding of the problem but, by pooling their collective knowledge, came up with a more successful product than any one of them could have done alone.
Groups who made a commitment to listen to each individual, not just the self-promoters, who didn’t bludgeon each other with their personal favorite solutions, and attempted to reach consensus, produced the better results. I pointed out that our classroom research showed that if they shared their ideas equally, and asked the ones who claimed to have the stellar solution to turn down the volume, their group could improve over their solo scores and produce something that, while maybe not perfect, was still going to be better.
The amount of time one is given to reach a decision, determines which strategy to use. In a crowded theater, filling with smoke, if hearing a voice cry out, “I am an usher. I know the way to the exit. Follow me …” then your choice should be to defer to the expert. The middle ground between that and laboring slowly to achieve consensus was voting, which many groups chose. When voting, a group gave up some speed but gained accuracy over those who just obeyed an “expert.”
There is much to learn from such exercises. We can be goaded by our insecurities into surrendering our individual right to decide a matter, but if blessed with enough time, we should aim at building consensus. In intermediate cases, the democratic system of voting helps us make less hasty, and likely more correct, decisions than any faster alternative.
Philip Lussier is a retired educator who lives in Ashfield.