Bulletware: Using Digital Tools to Overcome the Failure to Share Unique Information

Michael Shulman

Advisor: Stephen Zaccaro, PhD, Department of Psychology

Committee Members: Seth Kaplan, Tyler Shaw

Online Location, Zoom
November 09, 2026, 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

Groups often fail to share unique information. Members focus their discussion more on commonly known information than on pooling the unique information needed to solve their task. Decades of research have documented this failure and termed it the hidden profile effect, but strategies to reduce it have shown modest effects, and most have been tested on tasks that do not reflect the complexity of real-world decisions, where information from multiple sources must be shared, understood, and synthesized. This dissertation tests a family of graph-based outliners, termed here “Bulletware,” whose affordances support the storing, linking, and discovery of contextual and associated information, alongside the established intervention of withholding initial decisions. In a 2x2 experiment, 84 teams completed a new hidden profile task, developed for this dissertation to reflect real-world complexity, and hypotheses were tested with path analysis. The two interventions contributed uniquely. Bulletware primarily improved the sharing and discovery of unique information. Withholding initial decisions acted primarily as a moderator, strengthening the relationship between unique information shared and decision outcomes. Both improved shared mental models, and each of these processes in turn improved decision outcomes. These findings suggest that future research aimed at real-world teams should focus on strategies that improve the understanding of shared information, not only its exchange.