Early Chatbot Assistance Can Enhance Team Decision-Making by Promoting Cognitive Diversity and Information Elaboration

As AI increasingly assists teams in decision-making, the study examines how technology shapes team processes and performance. We conducted an online experiment of team decision-making assisted by chatbots and analyzed team interaction processes with computational methods. We found that teams assisted by a chatbot offering information in the first half of their decision-making process performed better than those assisted by the chatbot in the second half. The effect was explained by the variation in teams’ information-sharing process between the two chatbot conditions. When assisted by the chatbot in the first half of the decision-making task, teams showed higher levels of cognitive diversity (i.e., the difference in the information they shared) and information elaboration (i.e., exchange and integration of information). The findings demonstrate that if introduced early, AI can support team decision-making by acting as a catalyst to promote team information sharing.