One Angry Man is Enough How One Members' Anger can Hinder Team Performance

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One Angry Man is Enough! How One Members' Anger
can Hinder Team Performance

• Anat Rafaeli
• Arik Cheshin
• Roy Israely

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Emotion Contagion
Time 2
Time 1
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What Creates Emotion Contagion?
Unconscious mimicking of others non verbal cues.
(Hatfield et al, 1994 Neumann Strack, 2000)
So what happens when non verbal cues are
limited or absent?
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Context Electronic Communication

• Virtual Teams Does emotion of one member spread
  to other members?

H1Emotion expressed by individual member of team
spreads to other team members and to team as
whole.
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SHAPE FACTORY TASK

• Simulates an interdependent team of 4 members
  (shapes)
• Each member has own specialty
• Need to negotiate with other members
• Both individual and group performance

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Experiment Time Line
N49 groups (25 happy) 51 female Average age 24.7
Payment
DV
Task
Practice R
Instructions
PANAS
Arrival
1 min
20 min
3 R X 12 min
10 min
3 min
3 min
12 min
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Manipulation

• Confederate displays Anger or Happiness. (Based
  on Barsade, 2002 Kopelman, Rosette, Thompson,
  2006 Van Kleef et al, 2004)

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Manipulation Check
To what degree did express
anger?
T(145) 6.0 plt0.0001
To what degree did express happiness?
 
T(145) 6.9 plt0.0001
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Individual Emotion PANAS
Repeated Measures Negative Affect
Angry Confederate
F (1, 145) 8.561 Plt0.01
Happy Confederate
F (1, 145) 3.696 Plt0.06
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Group Emotion



Aggregated Anger Ratings
G E
T(47) 6.46 plt0.001
Angry RWG0.83
Happy RWG0.9
T(47) 4.19 plt0.001
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Mimicking??
Cohens Kappa 0.78
Number of negative messages sent
T(145) 6.30 plt0.0001
Number of positive messages sent

 
 
T(145) 5.57 plt0.0001
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Discussion

• Emotion contagion occurs with limited non verbal
  cues!
• Mimicking of message tone might play a role in
  emotion contagion.
• Emotion can be identified in virtual teams.

So.. WHY SHOULD WE CARE????
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Performance

• Mixed results regarding performance and emotion
  (Lyubomirsky, King, Diener, 2005)
• Positive and negative emotions and performance
  (Barsade, 2002 Beal, Weiss, Barros,
  MacDermind, 2005)

H2 Anger of individual team member can
influence performance of other members and of the
team as a whole.
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Performance
Individual Performance
T 4.22 plt0.001
Group Performance
T 2.97 plt0.001
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Understanding the Influence on Performance

• Confederates angry behavior during negotiation
  could have caused
• Lower selling prices
• Higher buying prices
• Less parts bought
• Less parts sold
• No significant differences were found on those
  variables!
• So, What DID affect the performance score?

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Understanding the influence on performance
Happy
T2.26 Plt0.05
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Summary

• Emotion of ONE member spreads to other members of
  virtual teams
• Emotion affects performance
• Depletion of cognitive resources?
• Increased cooperation?

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Future Directions

• Emotion and Behavior should be separated

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Thank you!!!