Research Design Connection: Time Apart a Plus

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | November 5th, 2018

Research recently published indicates the value of providing opportunities in workplaces for people to spend time apart. Bernstein, Shore and Lazer report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of Americaon their study of the performance of three-person groups doing a complex problem-solving assignment in three different situations. In some of the groups, members never interacted with each other, in another set of groups members interacted constantly, and in the final set of groups, members interacted intermittently with each other. The investigators found that “the groups in which members never interacted [were] the most creative, coming up with the largest number of unique solutions – including some of the best and some of the worst…the groups that constantly interacted…produce[d] a higher average quality of solution,  but that they…fail[ed] to find the very best solutions as often…Groups that interacted only intermittently preserved the best of …