The current study investigates the effects of physical distribution of team members and accountability of individual outputs on brainstorming performance. Teams were asked to generate as many uses for a knife as they could in a 12 min period. Participants included 103 undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses. A 2 (distributed vs. face-to-face) x 2 (accountable vs. non-accountable) analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect of accountability and a significant interaction. Individuals in face-to-face accountable teams generated the fewest ideas. These results are interpreted in terms of “evaluation apprehension” and “social loafing.”
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