Social Psychology at Pratt

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-dziura/teamwork-is-overrated_b_4762461.html

This is a great article that details the pros and cons of group work and how groupthink psychology affects the workplace. This article describes the western obsession with the concept of collaboration and why it is not always a good idea. Collaboration works when all parties have a common goal already decided for them and fit special designated roles. It does not work when a concept or plan of action has not been established yet. When people respect one another's skills and abilities group work can be a very constructive method of production or conflict resolution. In turn if the parties working together do not respect each other's ideas or skills then group work is worthless and often detrimental to production quality. Recently a few of my friends and I worked on a collaborative animation project. The project turned out much better then we had hoped for because we worked so well as a team. The reason this worked was because we all wanted to win so badly and we all respected each other's abilities as individual artists while maintaining our own concepts and design ideas. The three of us specialized in different sections of the production and helped each other fill in the holes when there was confusion. We were not afraid to ask "stupid questions" because we felt so comfortable with one another.