The effects of culture and cohesiveness on intragroup conflict and effectiveness

To investigate the influence of culture and cohesiveness on intragroup conflict and effectiveness, the authors made comparisons among groups of U.S. friends and strangers and among groups of Chinese friends and strangers. Groups consisting of 5 members of the same culture engaged in a decision-making task. Among U.S. participants, task conflict and performance results tended to vary together. U.S. strangers reported little task conflict (disagreements about fact or opinion) and performed relatively poorly, whereas U.S. friends' performances benefited from an uninhibited exchange of individual ideas and opinions. In contrast, Chinese participants reported uniformly high levels of intragroup, conflict and experienced relatively low performance. The results suggest that a task conflict advantage, with which group members feel comfortable enough to freely express and exchange opinions and disagree with each other to achieve optimal outcomes, might be culture specific.