What's in a Friendship? Partner Visibility Supports Cognitive Collaboration between Friends.

ABSTRACT: Not all cognitive collaborations are equally effective. We tested whether friendship and communication influenced collaborative efficiency by randomly assigning participants to complete a cognitive task with a friend or non-friend, while visible to their partner or separated by a partition. Collaborative efficiency was indexed by comparing each pair's performance to an optimal individual performance model of the same two people. The outcome was a strong interaction between friendship and partner visibility. Friends collaborated more efficiently than non-friends when visible to one another, but a partition that prevented pair members from seeing one another reduced the collaborative efficiency of friends and non-friends to a similar lower level. Secondary measures suggested that verbal comm

SUBMITTER: Brennan AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4664270 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature