Team members’ emotional displays as indicators of team functioning

Abstract

Emotions are inherent to team life, yet it is unclear how observers use team members’ emotional expressions to make sense of team processes. Drawing on Emotions as Social Information theory, we propose that observers use team members’ emotional displays as a source of information to predict the team's trajectory. We argue and show that displays of sadness elicit more pessimistic inferences regarding team dynamics (e.g., trust, satisfaction, team effectiveness, conflict) compared to displays of happiness. Moreover, we find that this effect is strengthened when the future interaction between the team members is more ambiguous (i.e., under ethnic dissimilarity; Study 1) and when emotional displays can be clearly linked to the team members’ collective experience (Study 2). These studies shed light on when and how people use others’ emotional expressions to form impressions of teams.

Keywords:

• Emotions as social information
• Impression formation
• Team functioning
• Sense-making

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Sample sizes were determined by the availability of participants during the specific laboratory periods. No participants were excluded from the current samples, and all manipulations and measures are discussed in the text and in Footnotes 3–5.

² We ran a pilot study (N = 56; 42 females, M _age = 21.62, SD_age = 4.92), which was intended to conceptually replicate the research of Magee and Tiedens (2006) and to confirm the suitability of a dyadic team setting for addressing the current research questions. Participants observed an ethnically dissimilar dyad (one Dutch male and one Moroccan male) displaying either both happiness, both sadness or one displaying happiness and the other sadness (counterbalanced; i.e., the mixed-emotion condition). Participants then provided ratings of anticipated liking, trust, stress, satisfaction and team effectiveness. We also asked participants to what extent each team member had expressed sadness and happiness (1 = sad to 7 = happy). The emotion manipulation was successful, such that happy (sad) faces were rated significantly higher (lower) than the midpoint of the scale (all Fs > 3.39; all ps < .01; all ds > 1.02). Additionally, we found a significant main effect of our emotion manipulation on all dependent variables (multivariate test: Pillai's trace = 0.45, F = 2.91, p = .003; univariate tests: all Fs > 3.75, all ps ≤ .03, all. ) Comparisons between the conditions showed that observers anticipated lower trust, liking, satisfaction and team effectiveness and higher stress when both dyad members portrayed sadness rather than happiness (all Fs > 5.94, all ps ≤ .02, all. ). The mixed-emotion condition differed from happiness (all Fs > 4.80, all ps ≤ .035, all ) but not from sadness (all Fs < 3.29, all ps ≥ .08, all ) for liking, trust and stress; it differed from sadness (F[1, 35] = 4.77, p = .04, ) but not from happiness (F[1, 36] = 0.38, p = .54, ) for team effectiveness; and it did not differ from both other emotion conditions for satisfaction (both Fs < 3.02, both ps ≥ .09, both ).

³ We also included a mixed-emotion condition in this study (N = 121, for which we counterbalanced the emotional displays across ethnicity). We found no differences between the two mixed-emotion conditions (i.e., sad-happy vs. happy-sad order on the screen) on the dependent variables (all Fs < 0.41, all ps > .52). Within the mixed-emotion condition, we only obtained an effect of our ethnicity manipulation for anticipated stress, F(1, 119) = 7.43, p = .007, ), not for the other dependent variables (all Fs < 1.93, all ps > 0.17). The mixed-emotion condition differed from the happy condition but not from the sad condition for liking (p difference mixed-sad = .43; p difference mixed-happy < .001), trust (p difference mixed-sad = .22; p difference mixed-happy = .001) and team effectiveness (p difference mixed-sad = .16; p difference mixed-happy < .001). For anticipated stress, the mixed-emotion condition did not differ from the happy condition, but did differ from the sad condition (p difference mixed-sad = .02; p difference mixed-happy = .38).

⁴ For exploratory purposes, we also measured three personality traits in both studies before the emotion manipulation (i.e., agreeableness, openness to experience and need for structure). These variables did not affect the pattern of results and are therefore not discussed in the paper. Additionally, we measured diversity beliefs and social dominance orientation at the end of the experiment for an unrelated research project pertaining to diversity perceptions of teams. In this context, we also used eight questions to measure variability perceptions of the dyadic team. As these questions are not relevant to our present research question, we decided not to include them in the present paper. Interested readers are welcome to contact the first author for additional information about these measures.

⁵ We also included a mixed-emotion condition in this study (N = 40), which showed no effects of our picture-timing manipulation on any of the dependent variables (all Fs < 2.10, all ps > .16). The mixed-emotion condition fell in between the happy and sad conditions for liking (p difference mixed-sad = .003; p difference mixed-happy <.001), stress (p difference mixed-sad = .02; p difference mixed-happy = .002) and satisfaction (p difference mixed-sad = .02; p difference mixed-happy < .001). The mixed-emotion condition did not differ significantly from both other emotion conditions for relationship conflict (p difference mixed-sad = .28; p difference mixed-happy = .07), and was significantly different from the happy condition but not from the sad condition for trust (p difference mixed-sad = .08; p difference mixed-happy < .001), task conflict (p difference mixed-sad = .56; p difference mixed-happy < .001), process conflict (p difference mixed-sad = .96; p difference mixed-happy < .001) and team effectiveness (p difference mixed-sad = .18; p difference mixed-happy < .001).