ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE 19, 378-391 (1977)

Cognitive Conflict and Goal Conflict Effects on

Task Performance

RICHARD A . COSIER

Indiana University

AND

GERALD L. ROSE
The University of Iowa

Decision-making (prediction) behavior under two types of conflict was ex-

perimentally examined within the Social Judgment Theory research paradigm.
Interpersonal cognitive conflict (the degree of disagreement over the interpre-
tation of a common stimulus), goal conflict (the degree of competition for
payoffs), and trial blocks were independent variables. Prediction error was the
dependent measure. Individuals made better predictions about task-criterion
values under no-goal conflict than under goal conflict conditions. During the
initial stage of a series of prediction trials, subjects made better predictions of
task-criterion values under high cognitive conflict than under low cognitive
conflict conditions. All groups of subjects were able to improve prediction
performance significantly over time. These results are generally consistent
with arguments stressing the potential benefits of minimal goal conflict over
payoffs and high cognitive conflict on decision quality.

Organizational decision makers are subjected to various forms of inter-

personal conflict (Thomas, 1976; Thomas and Schmidt, 1976). Two com-
mon forms of conflict are examined in this paper: goal conflict and cogni-
tive conflict. Goal conflict is an interpersonal relationship involving di-
vergent preferences regarding at least one of the decision outcomes. In
extremely unlikely circumstances it may involve divergent preferences
over all of the decision outcomes, constituting a zero-sum game. How-
ever, goal conflict generally takes some mixed motive form in which
decision makers' preferences are partially divergent and partially consis-
tent for different subsets of the set of all possible outcomes. For example,
two employees in the same department may share the preference for
attaining departmental profit objectives, but differ in their preference over
who should get the highest raise or promotion.
When a payoff is tied to performance in an interpersonal situation,

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and Thomas L. Ruble for their
helpful comments. Portions of this study are based on the first author's doctoral dissertation
completed at the University of Iowa and were presented at the 1975 National AIDS Confer-
ence.
378
Copyright ~) 1977 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN 0030-5073
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 379

competition may lead to goal conflict. Viewing the payoff as one relevant
goal, competition involves actions taken by one person to attain his or her
most preferred outcome while simultaneously blocking attainment of the
counterpart's most preferred outcome. This viewpoint is compatible with
definitions of competition that stress the notion of a goal (payoff) region
that cannot be occupied by anyone other than the "winning" party
(Deutsch, 1968). Arguments that attempt to separate competition from
conflict (Fink, 1968) ignore the conflict of interest inherent in the competi-
tive payoff structure. Competitive situations may in fact reflect goal con-
flict over payoffs and no-goal conflict over task performance objectives.
Cognitive conflict between decision makers is the awareness of incon-
sistent inferences drawn from identical information. In its extreme form,
two parties' inferences from the same data are logical contradictions of
one another. One example of cognitive conflict is the classic study of
functional fixation in the analyses of organizational problems by different
specialists (Dearborn and Simon, 1958). Sharing the same organizational
data, executives from different organizational functions inferred different
organizational problems, causing them to formulate a variety of different
organizational policies.

COGNITIVE CONFLICT
Several studies have employed the Social Judgment Theory (SJT) re-
search paradigm developed by Hammond (1965) to examine cognitive
conflict. A recent summary of these studies and the key elements of the
paradigm are reported by Brehmer (1976). While the principal use of the
paradigm has been to examine changes in interpersonal conflict (Brehmer,
1972; Hammond, 1973), at least one study has employed it to examine
cognitive conflict effects on prediction accuracy (Earle, 1973).
Earle used a two-cue task to examine the effects of policy differences
on prediction accuracy. In a task-learning (TL) treatment subjects could
learn only from the task cue values. In an interpersonal-learning (IPL)
treatment subjects could learn from a counterpart and the task. Earle also
examined effects of linear versus nonlinear training treatments and six
trial blocks (ten trials per block). Using a 2 x 2 z 6 ANOVA Earle
concludes task learning (prediction performance) was significantly better
in the IPL group than in the TL group, and this difference was primarily
due to the superior performance of the linear trained subjects in the IPL
treatment.
Earle's results suggest some sort of interpersonal policy differences
may be beneficial in a repetitive decision-making task. However, Earle's
design was unable to specifically examine cognitive conflict effects
caused by cue-weighting differences between policies. Earle focused on
linear versus nonlinear differences. Since a review of several studies has
380 COS~ER AND ROSE

shown the linear model does a remarkably good job of predicting human
judgments (Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1971), it seems necessary to specifi-
cally examine possible effects of cognitive conflict created solely by
cue-weighting differences between subjects trained with linear policies.
Brehmer (1976) notes that when a subject perceives high interpersonal
policy error with a counterpart, he or she tends to ask more questions to
discover what that counterpart is doing. This phenomenon is interpreted
by Brehmer as being dysfunctional since the random error obscures the
true nature of the disagreement. However, it seems very likely that in
some cases an incentive to probe cognitive differences may in fact be
functional. This suggestion is quite clear in the dialectic inquiry literature.
Dialectical systems create cognitive conflict by requiring a decision
maker to witness a "debate" between at least two interpreters (Church-
man, 1971). The interpreters are selected with the expectation that,
because of their differing areas of expertise, value systems, or world
views, they will be unlikely to draw identical inferences from their shared
data. Because dialectic processes frequently yield inconsistent, and some-
times contradictory, inferences from each datum, the decision maker is
induced to become deeply involved in resolving the conflicting interpreta-
tion. This involvement is expected to produce: (a) more appropriate defin-
itions of ill-structured situations (by avoiding premature definitions of the
problem based solely on initial data; Simon & Newall, 1970), (b) utiliza-
tion of decision processes appropriate to the problem (Mitroff & Feath-
eringham, 1974), (c) more adequate understanding of all technical aspects
of the situation and their interrelationships, (d) greater insight into in-
terpretive biases affecting both the interpreters' and the decision maker's
inferences, (e) holistic decision perspectives, (f) less tendency to remain
trapped within a limited line of reasoning (Maier, 1930), and (g) active
production of possible syntheses of alternative perspectives (Churchman,
1971).
Unfortunately, empirical results documenting these benefits are rare.
With the possible exception of Earle (1973), no one has attempted a con-
trolled experiment to document potential "dialectic" benefits, even
though Mitroff (1974) suggests the SJT paradigm may be the vehicle to
examine some aspects of dialectic inquiry caused by cognitive conflict.
GOAL CONFLICT
Rappoport and Cvetkovich (1970) examined the effects of reward struc-
ture and cognitive difference on prediction accuracy. Within the SJT
paradigm, they varied reward structure to create a mixed-motive situation
involving varying degrees of competition. In the "cooperative" treatment
each subject received 80% of the maximum payment possible depending
upon how close the joint judgment (within a dyad) was to the correct
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 381

answer and 20% of the maximum payment depending upon how far each
subject could persuade the other within the dyad to depart from his or her
initial policy. The "competitive" treatment reversed the payoff percen-
tages in the cooperative treatment. Results indicate the competitive orien-
tation impeded collective judgmental accuracy. No significant effects due
to cognitive differences were found.
The desire of Rappoport and Cvetkovich was to examine decision-
making behavior outside a limited zero-sum situation. This seems neces-
sary, but it is difficult to discern exactly what levels of goal conflict were
examined in their study. If one recognizes task goals and payoffgoals may
be included in the SJT paradigm, then a mixed-motive situation may be
created by allowing subjects no-goal conflict over task-performance ob-
jectives and goal conflict over payoff objectives (competition). The zero-
sum aspect of the payoff situation creates a clear case of goal conflict over
the payoffs.
Outside the SJT paradigm several studies have suggested competition
impedes decision performance. Competition usually increases arousal in
task-performance situations (Julian & Perry, 1967; Kelly, Rawson, &
Terry, 1973; Scott & Cherrington, 1974; Shaw, 1958; Steiner, 1972; Wan-
kel, 1972) which interferes with performance in quality-oriented tasks
(Dashiell, 1930; Deutsch, 1949; Gurnee, 1968; Shaw, 1958; Steers &
Porter, 1974; Whittemore, 1924). As Shaw (1958, p. 163) observed,
"competitive subjects performed less well, not because they were less
motivated, but because they were trying too hard." In general, "any
increase in drive will improve the performance of (simple tasks) but will
lead to deteriorated performance of activities that are complex, difficult,
or in general not well learned" (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959, p. 58). Thus, novel
or nonroutine decision situations may require low arousal, noncompeti-
tive, settings for high-quality results.
Unfortunately several of the above studies have used tasks that have
questionable organizational relevance. For example, Deutsch's (1949)
seminal study on competition versus cooperation involved a "Sunday
supplement" puzzle. Rappoport and Cvetkovich (1970) used a three-cue
input scheme with only one cue significantly correlated with the criterion
("racial strife").
PREDICTION PERFORMANCE OVER TIME
Several studies using some variant of the SJT paradigm have clearly
revealed that subjects can significantly improve criterion prediction per-
formance over time (Earle, 1973; Hammond & Summers, 1965; Ham-
mond, Wilkins, & Todd, 1966; Summers, Taliaferro, & Fletcher, 1970).
Furthermore recent studies have suggested performance may improve
even more under certain conditions. Muchinsky and Dudycha (1975)
382 COS~ER AND ROSE

found subjects perform better on tasks with cues that have "meaningful"
labels (plausible verbal descriptions) than tasks with abstract (no verbal
labels) cues. Subjects have been able to predict most accurately when
faced with cues that are positively and linearly related to the criterion
(Slovic, 1974), and when all cues are able to account for a high amount of
criterion variance (indicated by a high multiple correlation coefficient;
Brehmer, 1974).
HYPOTHESES
This experiment examines effects of cognitive conflict, goal conflict,
and trials on prediction performance. It allows examination of these ef-
fects within a design that may reveal information not available from ear-
lier studies. A zero-sum reward structure is used to define goal conflict
over payoffs and a joint reward structure to define no-goal conflict over
payoffs. However, all subjects have no-goal conflict over the task perfor-
mance, i.e., they should all attempt to make the most accurate predictions
possible. This should capture the mixed-motive situation advocated by
Rappoport and Cvetkovich (1970).
This study incorporates a prediction task consisting of financial input
and criteria values. A three-cue input scheme is used with all three cues
having predictive value during the interaction phase (wherein perfor-
mance after training is examined) of the study. These steps should in-
crease the representativeness of the experimental situation over some
previous SJT paradigm studies.
Finally, cue-weighting differences between subjects will define high
cognitive conflict. Low cognitive conflict subjects will experience similar
cue-weighting policies within an interpersonal prediction situation. All
subjects will learn linear policies, and face-to-face confounding variables
are eliminated. This allows examination of a type of cognitive conflict on
prediction performance that is not analyzed in the design used by Earle
(1973).
Based on suggestions found in the previous research, three hypotheses
will be examined in this experiment:
(H1) In estimation tasks, performance in high cognitive conflict condi-
tions will exceed performance in low cognitive conflict conditions.
(H2) In estimation tasks, performance in goal conflict conditions (over
payoffs) will be inferior to performance in no-goal conflict conditions
(over payoffs).
(H3) Prediction performance will improve as trials increase.
METHOD
Throughout the experiment the subject's task consisted of a series of
financial prediction situations, one prediction per situation (trial). Each
situation involved information for a hypothetical firm on three cue dimen-
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 383

sions: the firm's current ratio (xl), inventory turnover (xz), and debt-to-
equity ratio (x3). For each firm, subjects predicted the firm's price-
earnings (P/E) ratio (Yc). Financial cue dimensions and criteria were used
because they were expected to induce greater involvement and better esti-
mation performance from subjects than would an abstracted, unlabeled,
version of the task (Muchinsky & Dudycha, 1975). The particular labels
were selected because they are logically independent and there is no
empirical evidence of actual relationships between any of them and the
P/E ratio (Bell, 1974). Thus subjects should not have a priori perceptions
of the relative cue weights.
Eighty-seven upper division and graduate students in business ad-
ministration (31 females) were recruited in response to an opportunity to
earn up to $6.40 depending on their decision-making performance in an
experiment. Subjects were run in groups of from 3 to 15 over 3 days. In
each session they were randomly assigned to experimental conditions as
they entered the conference room in which the study was conducted. No
effects due to day or time were found.
A modified SJT program involving two phases was developed for the
experiment. In Phase I subjects were divided into two groups. Each group
considered 60 trials, but the two groups were trained with different
ecological validities. Group 1 validities 1 were: rxauc = .90, rx2uc = .50, and
rx~uc = .10. Group 2 validities reversed the first group's first and third
values and retained the second. The specific cue values satisfying these
validities were provided by Hammond. Between-cue multicolinearity was
nearly zero in order to avoid ambiguity in interpreting the "weight" of
each cue. During Phase I the multiple R 2 for both groups was close to .97.
This low degree of error was supposed to enhance learning during train-
ing. Since all correlations were determined separately for each trial block,
Phase I consisted of two parallel within-subjects designs (A × S; Lindquist,
1953). The within-factor trial blocks consisted of three levels, i.e., three
trial blocks of 20 trials each. Each trial consisted of the presentation of
three cue values which the subjects used to predict a criterion value. After
making the prediction and before the next trial, subjects were shown the
actual criterion value.
In Phase II, both groups of Phase I subjects were randomly assigned to
one of four between-subject conditions: high cognitive and goal conflict,
high cognitive and no-goal conflict, low cognitive and goal conflict, or low
cognitive and no-goal conflict. 2 All subjects considered 80 trials in four
trial blocks, constituting a within-subjects factor with four treatments

1 All ecological validities are approximate, + .08.

2 In order to maintain proportionality, 1 cell mean was used in the high cognitive conflict-
goal conflict cell to yield N = 88. One d f w a s subtracted for all tests using the substitution.
384 COSIER AND ROSE

(Type III; Lindquist, 1953). All three ecological validities equaled .50 (R 2
.75) in Phase II, but this change from Phase I was not communicated to
the subjects. The increase in error (reflected by the multiple coefficient of
determination) and the change in cue weights between Phases I and II were
undertaken to reflect Hammond's (1973) observation that in real-life situa-
tions past experience should be only partially appropriate to the situation
at hand. It seems reasonable that in many organizations the inconsistency
(error) in training policies will be less than the inconsistency encountered
in actual decision-making situations and the training policy (reflected by
cue weights) will only be partially correct.
The cognitive conflict manipulations were accomplished by giving sub-
jects "another person's" judgment of the criterion value with each set of
cues. These judgments were programmed to satisfy: rxt~c = .90, rx2u =
.50, and rxa~c = .10 (R 2 ~ .97). However, subjects believed the judgments
to be an earlier subject's responses to the same cues. Since subjects from
the second group in Phase I were trained with the. 10-.50-.90 cue weights,
they were in high cognitive conflict with the " o t h e r " decision maker. In
the low cognitive conflict conditions the "other person's" and the sub-
jects' judgments reflected the same weighting policies.
Goal conflict conditions in Phase II were established by instructing
subjects that their accuracy of estimation on each trial would be compared
to the other randomly chosen subject's and the one with the smallest error
would receive a payment of $.08 for the trial; the least accurate person
would receive nothing. Ties paid $.04 to each person. No-goal conflict
subjects were instructed that their payments would depend on the size of
the total error of their own and the other, randomly chosen, "subject' s"
judgments. The following scale was established on the basis of a pretest:
total (absolute) errors of no more than 3 units paid each subject $.08 per
trial; total errors in excess of 3 units resulted in no payment to the subject.
Subjects in all treatments were told it was in their best interest to predict
as accurately as possible 3. No payment information was available during
the two phases. (Actual payments were $4.00 to all subjects and did not
depend upon performance.) After each trial subjects were shown the
criterion value for that trial before beginning the next one.
Notice only goal conflict over payoffs was manipulated. This should
create a clear zero-sum situation in the goal conflict conditions and an
"identity of interest" situation in the no-goal conflict conditions. Other

3 An examination of the data revealed subjects in all treatments generally pursued the
desired task goal of maximum accuracy during Phase II. No subjects always agreed with
their counterpart and no subjects always predicted one unit away from their counterpart.
Only two subjects in the goal conflict treatment had less than 2 units deviation (0 or 1 unit)
from their counterpart on all trials.
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 385

task goals within the study should be identical, creating a mixed-motive

situation (see Footnote 3).
In both phases of the study, the performance measure was the mean of
the subject's absolute prediction errors between criteria and predictions
per trial block (i.e., E[ Y~-Ys[ / 20 where Y~ is the subject's prediction
and Y¢ represents the criterion value per trial). Brehmer (1975) has
pointed out differences in judgments on a given trial depend on subjects'
cognitive processes and cue value differences on that trial. Therefore, an
absolute difference dependent measure should only be used if the differ-
ence in cue values is the same across between-subject treatments. Taking
Brehmer's advice into account, this study uses the same cue values for all
between-subject treatments during Phase II. Also, the sample distribu-
tions of the dependent measures used in this study were examined. In
general, the distributions exhibited skewness and kurtosis coefficients
that strongly suggested normality.

RESULTS
Manipulation checks. Three manipulation checks were were used to
ascertain whether subjects acquired the proper judgment policies in Phase
I and thus experienced appropriate cognitive conflict in Phase II. The
prediction error of low cognitive conflict subjects (group 1) during training
(Phase I) was analyzed using a one-factor within-subjects design. As ex-
pected, these subjects were found to significantly reduce prediction error
during training (F = 27.'87, p < .001). The second Phase I group's (high
cognitive conflict) errors also decreased significantly (F = 30.05, p <
.001). Furthermore, the effectiveness of the cognitive conflict manipula-
tion was evidenced by the fact that high cognitive conflict subjects in block
1 of Phase II did in fact have significantly larger differences from t h e " o t h e r
person's" programmed estimates than did low cognitive conflict subjects
(F = 3%50, p < .001).
A third manipulation check was designed to determine if subjects
seemed to attain the desired cue-weighting schemes. For the final training
block, the average prediction per trial was calculated for each training
group and correlated with the three cue input values. Training group 1
correlations were: rxl~ = .85, rxz~s = .42, r~3~s = .31. Training group 2
,correlations were: r~1~ = .35, r ~ s = .61, r~ff~ = .79. Although there was
a tendency to slightly undervalue the most important cue and somewhat
overvalue the least important cue, both groups exhibited the proper ordi-
nal cue-weighting schemes.
To determine the effectiveness of the goal conflict manipulation, sub-
jects were asked in the postexperimental questionnaire to indicate along a
line ranging from "cooperative" to "competitive" how they charae-
386 COSIER AND ROSE

terized their payoff relationship with the other decision maker (the "other
person"). A simple between-subjects one-way ANOVA revealed goal
conflict subjects did perceive their payoff relationship with the "other
person" to be significantly more competitive than did no-goal conflict
subjects (F = 13.79, p < .001), suggesting the goal conflict (over payoffs)
manipulation was effective.
Phase H. The data reveal only partial support for HI. Looking at the
main effect, increased cognitive conflict appeared to significantly (F =
9.80, p < .005) enhance performance. However, a significant trial block
by cognitive conflict interaction (F = 3.84, p < .025; Fig. 1 and Table 1)
required that simple effects be studied. Only during the first trial block
were simple cognitive conflict effects significant. During trial block 1,
high cognitive conflict subjects predicted significantly better than low
cognitive conflict subjects (F = 14.40, p < .001). In blocks 2, 3, and 4
there were no significant performance differences due to cognitive con-
flict. However, the block 4 difference approached significance (F = 3.79,
p < .10).
Support was obtained for H2. No-goal conflict subjects had signifi-
cantly less prediction error than goal conflict subjects (F = 4.75, p < .05)
during Phase II. The goal conflict variable did not significantly interact
with either the cognitive conflict or trials factor.
A significant main effect was found for trial blocks (F = 14.98, p < .001)
suggesting that criterion prediction error significantly decreased over time
for all subjects. However, as noted above, the effects of trial blocks

TABLE 1
TYPE III A N O V A FOR PHASE II: CRITERION PREDICTION PERFORMANCE DATA

Source df SS MS F

Subjects 87 29.019 .334

Cognitive Conflict (B) 1 2.902 2.902 9.80***
Goal Conflict (C) 1 1.405 1.405 4.75*
BxC 1 .104 .104 .35
Error (between) 83 24.608 .296
Within 264 36.079 .137
Trials (A) 3 5.163 1.721 14.98"***
AxB 3 1.324 .441 3.84**
AxC 3 .105 .035 .30
AxB×C 3 .525 .175 1.52
Error (within) 252 28.962 .115
Total 350 65.098 .186

*p < .05
**p < .025
***p < .005
****p < .001
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 387

3.1
Mean A b s o l u t e
Prediction
2.9
Error*
)< 0---
2.7
×_---,- - .... ×, ~ u

2.5 0j ", ~X]

"X
2.3

2.1

0
I II III IV
'Trial Blocks

Key:
X- X Low Cog. & Low Goal C o n f l i c t
X. . . . . . . . × High Cog. & Low Goal C o n f l i c t
O-- 0 Low Cog. & High Goal C o n f l i c t
0........ 0 High Cog. & High Goal C o n f l i c t

*Note: Decreasing error indicates improved d e c i s i o n

quality.

FIO. 1. Criterion prediction performance results from Phase II.

interacted significantly with those of cognitive conflict (F = 3.84, p <

.025). A subsequent analysis of trial block differences at each level of
cognitive conflict revealed both groups of subjects significantly improved
criterion prediction performance over time (F = 9.20, p < .001; F = 9.50,
p < .001, respectively). This confirms H3. Notice that improvement was
greatest between the first and fourth blocks for low cognitive conflict
subjects and between the second and fourth blocks for high cognitive
conflict subjects (Fig. 1).
DISCUSSION
Several steps were taken to increase the representativeness of this
laboratory situation over some previous studies. Meaningful labels for
three cues were employed, random cue relationships to the criterion were
eliminated in Phase II, and face-to-face potential confounds were elimi-
nated. The results found in this study are consistent with earlier findings
outside the SJT paradigm (e.g., Dashiell, 1930; Deutsch, 1949; Gurnee,
1968; Shaw, 1958; Steers & Porter, 1974; Whittemore, 1924) and Rap-
poport and Cvetkovich's (1970) study which demonstrated that decision
performance (quality) is inhibited under conditions of goal conflict over
payoffs. In general, predictions of criterion values were less accurate
under goal conflict than under no-goal conflict. In addition, high cognitive
conflict caused by cue-weighting differences facilitated significantly bet-
t,er accuracy in criterion prediction in the first of four trial blocks and did
388 COSIER AND ROSE

not cause inferior accuracy in the other blocks. Finally, subjects managed
to significantly improve their prediction performance with experience.
Thus, the most general implication is that predictions of criterion values
are hindered by high goal conflict, but not by high cognitive conflict, and
are hindered by lack of experience.
The failure of high cognitive conflict to facilitate criterion prediction
accuracy in blocks 2, 3, and 4 of Phase II cautions against uncritical
endorsement of the benefits of cognitive conflict. Still, it does appear in
some situations that subjects experiencing high cognitive conflict may
tend to abandon their incorrect training policy quicker than subjects ex-
periencing low cognitive conflict. The results in this study suggest diver-
gent cue-weighting policies may cause decision makers to learn some
tasks faster than subjects who perceive similar interpersonal cue-
weighting policies. However this advantage disappears over time.
The curvilinear relationship between prediction performance and time
found for high cognitive conflict treatments agrees with trends reported
by Rapport and Cvetkovich (1970). They believe error increased, then
decreased over time in their study because subjects first experimented to
attain perfect accuracy and then tended to learn the true nature of the
uncertain task. This study suggests the initial advantage in a prediction
task may go to subjects experiencing high cognitive conflict, but as the
search for a better policy develops this advantage is lost.
These results suggest some potentially useful methods for improving
decision making by improving estimation or prediction performance.
First, under some conditions it could be beneficial to encourage conflict-
ing interpretations of identical data. The results of this study lend some
support for the tenants of dialectic inquiry (Churchman, 1971). Perceived
cognitive differences in a novel task may lead to a more thorough investi-
gation of the task issues and hence better decisions. Second, the promo-
tion and maintenmnce of a sense of shared payoff objectives between
those with interpretive differences seems critical. Research comparing
alternative methods of accomplishing a continued sense of shared prefer-
ences during cognitive conflict is needed. Organizational practices such as
individual incentive systems stressing comparative performance may re-
duce decision effectiveness. Unfortunately, fostering a sense of minimal
goal conflict in order to promote immediate improvements in decision
making risks a reduction of interpretive conflict. People with shared goals
may not be very prone to adequate cognitive conflict. However, methods
for aggregating divergent views anonymously, such as the nominal group
technique (Delbecq, Van de Ven, & Gustafson, 1975) appear to help
preserve a sense of shared objectives while capturing the benefits of in-
terpretive disagreement.
The degree of possible generalizability from this research design de-
 COGNITIVE AND GOAL CONFLICT EFFECTS 389

serves mention. The design of this experiment involved nearly equal

cue-weighting error for all subjects in the initial stage of Phase II. All
subjects were trained to weight one cue properly (x2), but to have equal
error in the perceived importance of the other cues (xl and xa). This
"equal error" was attempted by using equally weighted cues during Phase
II that were midway between the divergent training methods. 4 This
method gave neither the high nor low cognitive conflict subjects an advan-
tage in Phase II due to better training. Although this is the standard SJT
paradigm structure (Brehmer, 1976), the quicker learning phenomenon
found in this study may be primarily limited to situations where the "cor-
rect" decision responses lie somewhere near the midway point between
the conflicting interpretations of the two decision makers. It may be that
as the correct set of responses moves toward one or the other conflicting
interpretations, the cognitive conflict benefits diminish.
Furthermore, to enhance the training effectiveness the multiple coeffi-
cient of determination during Phase I was quite high (approximately .97).
To approximate irreconcilable error found in actual decision situations,
this coefficient was decreased in Phase II (to approximately .75). This
drop in predictability could have decreased the impact of cognitive con-
flict (Brehmer, 1976) by causing d e c r e a s e d understanding of the
decision-making situation and shifting emphasis from the interpersonal
differences. However, it should be remembered the programmed "other
decision maker" did maintain a very low degree of policy error during
]Phase II (R 2 was approximately .97); thus, the true nature of the disa-
greement between decision makers should have been quite obvious.
These results should not be interpreted as supporting high cognitive
conflict or minimal goal conflict over payoffs for all elements of decision
processes. This study focused on performance quality in a SJT labora-
tory paradigm. Still, it seems high cognitive conflict and minimal goal
conflict over payoffs may be generally desirable. Furthermore, the results
of this study suggest directions for future research, Cognitive conflict
effects caused by cue-weighting differences should be examined in task
structures that deviate from the "equal error" scheme used in this study.
Goal conflict caused by different task-performance criteria (as opposed to
divergent payoff preferences) should be examined. Finally, cognitive con-
flict and goal conflict effects should be examined outside the laboratory to
enhance generalizability of the benefits of high cognitive conflict and
minimal goal conflict on decision quality.

4 Notice the actual cue dependencies were somewhat discrepant from the theoretical
training relationships (as reported in the manipulation check section). However, the actual
dependencies did come very close to preserving the equal error between training conditions.
390 COSlEI~ AND ROSE

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]RECEIVED:August 13, 1976.