Devil's advocate versus authentic dissent: stimulating quantity and quality
Charlan Nemeth, Keith Brown and John Rogers compared devil's advocate with authentic dissent as ways of stimulating better group decisions. An earlier study had suggested that devil's advocates tend to reinforce the initial viewpoint instead of prompting divergent thinking. The authors tested conditions in which the devil's advocate's true position was known or unknown, and consistent or not with the assigned position, and measured both the quantity and the quality of solutions. The authentic minority outperformed all three devil's advocate conditions, which the authors read as showing that role-playing has difficulty reproducing genuine dissent.
Charlan Nemeth, Keith Brown and John Rogers compared devil's advocate with authentic dissent as ways of stimulating better group decisions. An earlier study had suggested that devil's advocates tend to reinforce the initial viewpoint instead of prompting divergent thinking. The authors tested conditions in which the devil's advocate's true position was known or unknown, and consistent or not with the assigned position, and measured both the quantity and the quality of solutions. The authentic minority outperformed all three devil's advocate conditions, which the authors read as showing that role-playing has difficulty reproducing genuine dissent.
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Nemeth, C., Brown, K., & Rogers, J. (2001). Devil's advocate versus authentic dissent: stimulating quantity and quality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31(6), 707-720. doi:10.1002/ejsp.58