Contact:
Geof Becker
412-268-3486

For immediate release:
July 26, 2006

Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research To Hold First Conference in Pittsburgh

Co-founded by Tepper Professor, Conference Will Include Research On Grade Inflation, Medical Decision Making and Jury Behavior

PITTSBURGH—The first-ever conference of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGroup.info) will be held July 27-29 at the Holiday Inn Select-University Center in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The INGroup represents scholars from various academic disciplines who research group behavior and decision making. Laurie Weingart, professor of organizational behavior and theory at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, co-founded the INGroup.

"Although we all study groups and teams, many of us are in different disciplines and needed an organization specifically dedicated to this interdisciplinary approach to group research," said Weingart, who directs the university's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Teams.

This year's conference is attracting international researchers from countries including the U.S., Switzerland and the Netherlands. The two-day event will cover such aspects of group behavior as multinational distributed teams; the impact of changes on group membership; group decision making; information sharing; group performance and competition. Friday's highlights include sessions on grade inflation, predicting the accuracy of group information in a medical emergency and group coordination. Saturday's events will feature sessions on social support for breast cancer patients; predicting jury deliberation, participation and satisfaction; and how confidence and timing impact experts' influence.

Five scholars founded the INGroup last July to advance the understanding of group behavior, dynamics and outcomes. They created its accompanying conference series to represent the many researchers from around the world who study groups and teams but are from various social scientific disciplines, such as communication, organizational behavior, psychology and sociology. The five founders are professors Joann Keyton, University of Kansas; Richard Kettner-Polley, Colorado Technical University; Franziska Tschan, University of Neuchatel; Weingart; and associate professor Gwen Wittenbaum, Michigan State University.

For more information, including a conference schedule, see www.msu.edu/~gwittenb/ingroup.html.