Designs That Dial-Down The Need to Conform
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Clients often ask for advice on how to apply cognitive design to the challenge of group decision-making. A common request is for interventions that get individuals to contribute more and avoid group think. How can we productively unleash the individual?
One approach is understand the individual and social cognition of conformity and design interventions and interactions that soften it.
For specific evidence-based clues on how to do that check out, Conformity: Ten Timeless Influencers. The author does an excellent job summarizing some of the literature. Key point have clear design implications including, for example:
- Avoid groups sizes of 3-5
- Plant a competent dissenter in the group
- Make authority less visible
- Deemphasize opportunities for winning group approval
Of course dialing-down the impact of conformity is just one of several things we can do with cognitive design to improve group dynamics. I am interested to hear about other approaches from readers.
