R. Scott Tindale
Professor Emeritus
Education
Doctorate: Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984)
Research Interests
Most of my research involves issues of information processing and social influence in individual and group decision making. Specifically, my recent research has focused on how group members can share certain representations of a task (or certain cognitive processes/heuristics activated by the task) and how these shared representations impact on group decision performance and intra-group influence processes. For example, although groups often out-perform individuals in many task domains, we have found that for certain types of decision problems (particularly those involving the use of probabilistic information), groups perform below the levels of an average individual. In such cases, we have found that dominant, but biased, task representations shared among the group members tend to give factions favoring alternatives consistent with such representations greater power within the group. I am also interested in the effects of procedures on group performance, and on how group members perceive procedures, particularly in terms of procedural fairness and efficiency. My applied interests revolve around legal settings, particularly as they relate to juries, and decision making groups in organizations. Most recently, my research team has applied these notions to issues concerning the optimal ways to distribute information across group members and how shared norms can lead groups to behave unethically.
Publications/Research Listings
Researchgate: R. Scott Tindale
Tindale, R. S., & Kluwe, K. (2015). Decision making in groups and organizations. In G. Keren & G. Wu (Eds.) The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (Vol. 2, pp. 849 – 874). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Tindale, R. S., Smith, C. M., Dykema-Engblade, A., Kluwe, K. (2012). Good and bad group performance: Same process – different outcome. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 15, 603-618. DOI:10.1177/136843021254928
Kerr, N. L., & Tindale, R. S. (2011). Group-based forecasting: A social psychological analysis. International Journal of Forecasting, 27, 14 – 40. doi:10.1016/j.ijforecast.2010.02.001
Kerr, N. L., & Tindale, R. S. (2004). Small group decision making and performance. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 623-656.