Effects of Group Goals and Time Pressure on Group Efficacy, Information-Seeking Strategy, and Performance

Abstract Fifty-six 3-person groups performed the Winter Survival exercise (which supposes a plane crash in the wilderness in winter). Assigned goals (in terms of deviation of the groups' ranking of the relative importance of various survival objects from experts' ranking) and time pressure were manipulated. Group-set goal difficulty, group efficacy, perceived time pressure, information seeking (i.e., knowledge seeking regarding the task through the "purchase" of clues), and group performance were assessed. Perceived time pressure negatively affected group efficacy (p < .10). Both assigned goals and group efficacy influenced the level of group-set goals, which in turn affected group information seeking. The seeking of task-relevant information through the purchase of clues was the only direct predictor of group performance.