Abstract:

Groupthink is the tendency to sacrifice quality decision making and problem solving in order to preserve consensus and avoid conflicts in a group (Janis, 1972). We describe a study that analyses the influence of both Janis´s recommendations to prevent groupthink and motivation in cooperative learning and social emotions. Participants were 577 undergraduate students who applied a designed problem solving technique to course materials. Motivation was an absent/present variable defined as an extra mark in the course. Cooperative learning was evaluated across different dimensions (social skills, creativity, quality decision making, quality of learning and autonomy). Furthermore, three social emotions were evaluated (responsibility, guilt and embarrassment). Results show that the used technique increases cooperative learning and emotion of responsibility. These findings demonstrate that research on social-cognitive psychology may contribute to improve education.

Keywords:

Group decision making, problem solving, cooperative learning, motivation, emotion.