The interplay of conflict and analogy in multidisciplinary teams

Creative teamwork in multidisciplinary teams is a topic of interest to cognitive psychologists on the one hand, and to both social and organizational psychologists on the other. However, the interconnections between cognitive and social layers have been rarely explored. Drawing on mental models and dissonance theories, the current study takes a central variable studied by cognitive psychologists—analogy—and examines its relationship to a central variable examined by social psychologists—conflict. In an observational, field study, over 11 h of audio–video data from conversations of the Mars Exploration Rover scientists were coded for different types of analogy and micro-conflicts that reveal the character of underlying psychological mechanisms. Two different types of time-lagged logistic models applied to these data revealed asymmetric patterns of associations between analogy and conflict. Within-domain analogies, but not within-discipline or outside-discipline analogies, preceded science and work process conflicts, suggesting that in multidisciplinary teams, representational gaps in very close domains will be more likely to spark conflict. But analogies also occurred in reaction to conflict: Process and negative conflicts, but not task conflicts, preceded within-discipline analogies, but not to within-domain or outside-discipline analogies. This study demonstrates ways in which cognition can be bidirectionally tied to social processes and discourse.

• We analyzed over 11 h of conversations from multidisciplinary science groups.
• We examined the interplay of analogy and micro-conflicts.
• Conversations were analyzed using time-lagged logistic models.
• Within-domain analogies preceded science and work process micro-conflicts.
• Process and negative micro-conflicts preceded within-discipline analogies.