CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

172 SCHULZ-HARDT, MOJZISCH, AND VOGELGESANG
thinking, or whether simply presenting a dissenting minority opinion is
sufficient to induce this processing style. We also do not know whether
other behavioral styles of the minority (e.g., flexibility) are beneficial to
triggering this effect. However, knowledge on such effective behavioral
styles would help us to design dissent effectively in organizations.
Differentiating between Different Forms of Exposition to Dissent. As previously
outlined, the distinction between different sources of dissent
(minority vs. majority) is central to dissent research. In contrast, another
distinction has hardly been systematically investigated yet, namely that
between different forms of exposition to dissent. In dissent research,
very different forms of exposition to dissent are used. Sometimes (e.g.,
Nemeth & Rogers, 1996), people receive only abstract information about
how opinions are distributed in their population (e.g., they hear that 18%
of their reference group has an opposing opinion to their own) or in a
particular group (e.g., one of the five persons actually performing the
experimental task disagrees with them). In other studies (e.g., Levine &
Russo, 1995), the participants receive similar information as in the latter
case, and additionally they anticipate that they will have a subsequent
interaction (e.g., a group discussion) with these other persons. Again, in
other studies (e.g., Nemeth, Brown, & Rogers, 2001), people are actually
confronted with the persons expressing this dissent and interact with
them. At the moment, all of these different expositions to dissent are
treated as if they were the same or, at least, differences between them
did not have to be considered. However, type of exposition to dissent
might bring about substantially different dissent effects. For example,
Mojzisch, Schulz-Hardt, Kerschreiter, and Frey (2007) directly compared
the first two of the aforementioned types of exposition. One of
their findings was that people who were just given feedback about two
other persons’ decisions and learned that these persons favored a different
alternative than they did (majority dissent) exhibited an information
search strategy focussing on the majority position. In contrast, if
they expected to interact with this majority, their information search
focussed on their own position. Hence, the anticipation of interaction
with a majority may induce self-defensive processes that are lacking if no
such interaction is anticipated (see also the differences between dissent
effects in previous sections). Systematically exploring such differential
effects of different expositions to dissent would not only contribute to
our theoretical understanding of dissent effects but also help us to find
out how people should be exposed to dissent in organizations in order
to maximize positive effects on creativity and performance.
How to Improve the Effects of Contrived Dissent. As we have argued,
authentic dissent cannot always be realized, and even if it can be realized,
it can also have costs in terms of low group cohesiveness or slow implementation
of solutions found by a group. Thus, using contrived dissent