Persistence in Brainstorming: Exploring Stop Rules in Same-Sex Groups

In a laboratory experiment, three-person interactive and three-person nominal groups of college students brainstormed without externally imposed time constraints. All groups were homogeneous with regard to gender. Half of the participants were instructed to continue brainstorming until they ran out of ideas (expectancy stop rule), whereas the other half were instructed to continue until they were satisfied with their performance (satisfaction stop rule). We found that interactive groups were more persistent than nominal groups in both of the stop rule conditions and thereby compensated for their usual productivity loss. We also found, as predicted, that women were more persistent in the satisfaction stop rule condition, whereas men were more persistent in the expectancy stop rule condition. This effect may be due to gender differences in self-evaluations.