Cooperative versus competitive efforts and problem solving

Abstract

The impacts of cooperative and competitive efforts on problem solving were compared. In order to resolve the controversy over whether cooperation promotes higher- or lower-quality individual problem solving than does competition, 46 studies, published between 1929 and 1993, were examined. The findings from these studies were classified in 4 categories according to the type of problem solving measured: linguistic (solved through written and oral language), nonlinguistic (solved through symbols, math, motor activities, actions), well-defined (having clearly defined operations and solutions), and ill-defined (lacking clear definitions, operations, and solu-tions). The 63 relevant findings that resulted were subjected to a meta-analysis for purposes of integration. Members of cooperative teams outper-formed individuals competing with each other on all 4 types of problem solving (effect sizes = 0.37, 0.72, 0.52, 0.60, respectively). These results held for individuals of all ages and for studies of high, medium, and low quality. The superiority of cooperation, however, was greater on nonlinguis-tic than on linguistic problems. There is general agreement that cooperative efforts are more effective than are competitive efforts for completing lower-level tasks, such as those involving motor skills, decoding, and recall of factual information (D. W. Johnson, Maruyama, R