| Antidotes to the problems associated with uniformity of views and premature adoption of majority solutions have involved fostering dissent in one form or another (Katzenstein, 1996). This has most commonly taken the form of either a Devil's Advocate (DA), or dialectical inquiry (DI). Previous studies comparing the effectiveness of a DA and DI have been inconsistent. Furthermore, comparisons between assigned and authentic dissent have shown the assigned dissenter did not stimulate any improvement in performance. This was at the cost of greater group conflict and personal feelings of hostility (Nemeth et al., 2001). In this study three important issues were investigated: First, this study manipulated the group setting to either increase or decrease the expectation of consensus. The present study also compared dissent that either criticized the group solution or proposed an alternative solution. Finally, this experiment manipulated whether the dissent was authentic or role-played. Results show that the assigned dissenter was not effective in improving performance. This again emphasizes the value of an authentic dissenter and the difficulty in creating divergent thinking by way of role-playing. Theoretical evaluations of the results and directions for further study were also discussed. |
