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Integrative Complexity We have identified a robust arena of research in social, personality, and organizational psychology on a concept called “integrative complexity”, upon which we base our outcome measure. Integrative complexity (Suedfield, Tetlock, & Streufert, 1992) refers to the degree to which thinking and reasoning involve the recognition and integration of multiple perspectives and possibilities and their interrelated contingencies. For legal reasons, it is important to note that integrative complexity to our knowledge has never been used in research on racial diversity, and none of the leading researchers in this line of work has a political perspective identified with support of affirmative action, i.e., the work is free of any perceived bias with respect to our issue at hand. For nearly fifty years, there has been an interest in the effects of cognitive styles. Integrative complexity is a specific cognitive style that concerns the differentiation and integration of dimensions. Differentiation refers to the degree to which persons use different dimensions to discuss an issue. For instance, if a person uses a single dimension (e.g., good-bad) to discuss the issue, there would be no differentiation. Assuming that there is differentiation, the second aspect of integrative complexity concerns the degree to which two or more dimensions are related or connected. There can be no integration, some integration, or complex integration. The greater the degree of integration, the greater the integrative complexity. A person exhibiting the lowest level of integrative complexity recognizes only one perspective to a problem or an issue. Persons with higher levels of complexity recognize the existence of alternative perspectives, but see them as independent and unrelated. At the highest level of integrative complexity, there is recognition of the trade-offs among perspectives and solutions. A strong advantage of using the integrative complexity as a measure is that it is an established social science measurement tool and has been used in a wide body of literature as an outcome and it has a substantial body of supporting empirical research, published in some of the best peer-reviewed journals in the field of social and personality psychology. Among the areas studied are attitude change, person perception, and group decision-making. Particularly relevant to this study, the measure has been used in studies of groupthink and minority influence (discussed below). Trained raters are used to code text using a seven-point scale. Previous research has shown that the measure is quantitative (1 – 7) and has acceptable inter-rater reliability. In the context of higher education, studying integrative complexity in this manner matches quite well with the educational goals of the university. First, it addresses the development of critical thinking skills, one of the central and oldest goals of a collegiate education. And second, the study focuses on the effects of peer interaction, which is recognized as perhaps the most influential source of change in college. References Suedfeld, P., Tetlock, P., & Streufert, S. (1992). Conceptual/integrative complexity. In C.P. Smith (Ed.), Motivation and Personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. For additional information on integrative complexity, go to |
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