Team Performance in a Dynamic Resource Allocation Task: The Importance of Heuristics

The utility of group decision heuristics was examined in the context of a dynamic resource allocation task which incorporates both certain and uncertain events. Visual coding schemes for presenting the events varied among teams, only half the teams received experimenter developed heuristics, and both moderate and fast information presentation rates were used. Performance scores were significantly higher for teams with heuristics. In addition, teams performed better under moderate time pressure and with practice, and teams without heuristics displayed inconsistencies in handling uncertain events whereas teams with heuristics behaved as predicted by utility theory. No performance differences were found for variations in visual coding schemes.