Silence is Golden: Team Problem Solving and Communication Costs

Gary Charness, David Cooper () and Zachary Grossman

No wp2018_02_01, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Florida State University

Abstract: Numerous experimental studies have found that teams outperform individuals on intellective problems by a large degree. This result is intuitively appealing, as teams can benefit from sharing insights. However, much of this literature considers a task that involves a single clear insight. We instead analyze experiments comparing the performance of individuals and teams of four subjects at solving a series of challenging logic puzzles, where the solution involves a series of incremental steps. Contrary to the existing literature, team performance is statistically indistinguishable from that of individuals when there is no cost to sending a message. Frictions resulting from both congestion and incorrect suggestions substantially derail the solution process for teams. If we impose a very small cost of communication on teams, the performance of teams improves. Underlying these results is a robust negative relationship between frequency of communication and team performance. Using a straightforward prediction exercise, we show that performance would have improved dramatically if the best member of each team had been asked to solve the puzzles alone rather than forming a team.

Keywords: Communication; inexpensive talk; team performance; puzzles; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D03 D20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48
Date: 2015-07, Revised 2018-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu: ... ownload/citation.pdf Revised version, 2018-02 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Silence is golden: team problem solving and communication costs (2020)
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