journal of applied psychology monograph Vol. 53, No. 1, Part 2 February 1969 PERSONALITY, PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCEDURE, AND PERFORMANCE IN SMALL GROUPS 1 THOMAS J. BOUCHARD, JR 2 University of California, Sanla Barbara Two experiments were conducted. The first compared a combination of group and individual brainstorming with simply individual brainstorming The second contrasted three problem-solving procedures: critical group problem solving, group brainstorming, and individual brainstorming. In Experiment II, all three procedures were divided into feedback and nonfeedback conditions. Feedback consisted of having 5s listen to the first third of their performance and then continue to work on the remainder Performance under all conditions was cor- related with personality variables derived from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), the Firo-B, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a vocabulary- test, and five factors derived from a factor analysis of the CPI. Experiment I indicated that there is no difference between a combination of group and indi- vidual brainstorming and simply individual brainstorming. Experiment II indi- cated that individual brainstorming is superior to group brainstorming which is superior to group critical problem solving. Feedback had no effect on per- formance within procedures. The CPI Sociability scale and the first factor of the CPI were shown to be consistently related to performance under group- problem-solving conditions During the last IS years there has been a Kinnon, 1962; Stein & Heinze, 1960; Taylor rapid growth of research interest in the facili- & Barron, 1963). Another area of potentially tation of creative or original thinking, and equal importance, but less rapid growth, has most of this interest has focused on the in- been that of creativity in groups. In spite of dividual (Barron, 1965; Golann, 1963; Mac- the tremendous surge of research on the small group (McGrath & Altman, 1966) few studies iThisinvesUgatioD was supported in part by a haye f d pro cesses or procedures for United States Public Health Service Predoctoral Fel- it _ t . Vi ^. t K .. f. ,.,.,. lowship held by the author (i-Fi-MH-23, 747-OiAl) th e facilitation of creative or original thinking from the National Institute of Mental Health while in problem-solving groups. In their review of at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Re- studies contrasting the quality of group per- search, University of California, Berkeley. Part of f or mance and individual performance, Lorge, the research presented here was carried out in par- d Brenner ( sg) exduded Ual fulfillment of the PhD degree at the University , ' . , ' . . , of California, Berkeley. The author expresses his the consideration of group process as such, appreciation to Donald W. MacKinnon, Gerald Men- Kelley and Thibaut (1954), in their review dekohn, and William Rohwer for their advice and^ o f experiments on group problem solving and cntiasm. process, spent less than one page on the effects ^T P ^TrXL*V™: e X th o< ° f '«™l group-problem^lving procedures, California, Santa Barbara, California 93106. and cited no relevant studies. Recent reviews 1 © 1969 by tie American Psychological Association, Inc