Team effectiveness: Beyond skills and cognitive ability.

On the basis of job analysis results, the validity of using measures of general cognitive ability, job-specific skills, and personality traits jointly at both the individual level and the group level to predict the performance of 79 four-person, human resource work teams was evaluated. Team member trait and job skill scores were aggregated with a conjunctive model of task performance. At the individual level of analysis, measures of personality (i.e., Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) predicted peer ratings of team member performance beyond measures of job-specific skills and general cognitive ability. Similarly, at the group level of analysis, both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted supervisor ratings of work team performance, objective measures of work team accuracy, and work completed. At both the individual and group levels, the trait of Agreeableness predicted Interpersonal Skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group Decision Making and Perceived Decision Success: The Role of Communication Medium.

The authors investigated the role of communication medium on the relationship between team member perceptions and decision success. Seventy-three 3-person groups participated in a consensus intellective task either face-to-face (FTF) or via computer-mediated communication (CMC). The participants also assessed their group's decision success and team member competencies. CMC group members' success perceptions significantly predicted their group's performance, but FTF group members' perceptions did not. Furthermore, only CMC group members' judgments regarding their group's problem-solving ability significantly predicted their decision success. Last, judgments of decision success mediated the relationship between perceptions of members' problem-solving ability and decision success only for CMC group members. Implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influences of Personality on the Adoption of Conflict-Handling Styles and Conflict Outcomes for Facility Managers

Although conflict can be both functional and dysfunctional, unresolved conflict results in dissatisfaction and stress, thus reducing efficiency and productivity. However, personality affects the ability to handle conflict. The relationships of personal traits (extraversion and agreeableness), conflict-handling styles, and functional/dysfunctional conflicts are examined from a sample of facility managers in Hong Kong by using Rahim’s conflict style model and the Big Five personality traits of extraversion and agreeableness. In this study, extraversion shows positive correlation with the integrating and compromising styles, which are conducive to functional conflict incidents. The integrating style is the most commonly adopted style among facility managers in Hong Kong. Dysfunctional conflict is associated with the three styles of obliging, dominating, and avoiding; in particular, the avoiding style is a significant predicting variable of dysfunctional conflict incidents. Although conflict is inevitable, it is suggested that personality is an important variable in selecting project team members, as the combined traits of high extraversion and low agreeableness encourage the integrating style, which is conducive to functional conflict outcome.     

Personality test scores in the management hierarchy.

Scores on a brief personality test for 457 Ss classified in 5 hierarchical management categories (from I-President, V.P., etc., to V-Clerks and Factory Workers) revealed valid hierarchy trends for the traits (poor) adjustment, emotionality, detail and social dominance, and no valid trends for the traits extraversion, drive and objectivity. The criterion of validity of trend was a single classification analysis of variance of the trait scores for the five hierarchical levels giving an F-ratio significant at the .05 level or better. The independence of these trends of age, education and objectivity was also studied. For all the traits there was a substantial and normally distributed dispersion around the mean at every level of the hierarchy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A review of the relationships between personality and performance in small groups.

Studies included cover the period from 1900 to October 1957 and do not include those studies wherein children constitute the sample. The review is concerned with 7 personality characteristics (introversion-extraversion, dominance, interpersonal sensitivity, masculinity-feminity, conservatism, intelligence, and adjustment) and their relationship to such group behavior variables as leadership, popularity, conformity, task activity, total activity, and social-emotional activity. Most of the studies yielded low positive relationships, intelligence being the best predictor of individual behavior in the group. Considering the studies as a whole, the author is encouraged by the many clear trends which emerge. 151 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Voice and cooperative behavior as contrasting forms of contextual performance: Evidence of differential relationships with Big Five personality characteristics and cognitive ability.

The results of a laboratory study of 276 individuals replicate past findings for cooperative behavior as a form of contextual performance and extend past research by providing evidence that voice (constructive change-oriented communication) may be another form of contextual performance. Conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness related more strongly to voice behavior and cooperative behavior than to task performance. Cognitive ability related more strongly to task performance than to voice behavior or cooperative behavior. Results also demonstrate contrasting relationships for agreeableness (positive with cooperative behavior and negative with voice behavior). This supports recent research suggesting the possibility of bidirectional relationships with personality characteristics across different dimensions of job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dyads and triads at 35,000 feet: Factors affecting group process and aircrew performance.

Discusses the small-group performance situation involved in the task of flying a multipilot transport aircraft and research psychology's problems in defining the nature of the group process. Input variables (e.g., task characteristics, reward structure, position power, stress levels) have been identified and related to the flightcrew process. There have been suggestions that leader and member personality profiles are important predictors of group process variables in the aviation environment. Levels of workload and stress have been found in work in high fidelity flight simulators to be characteristic of many accident scenarios. Because accidents are infrequent, the author maintains that they make terrible research criteria for judging crew performance. The issue is addressed in the context of altering group norms, increasing member effort and coordination, and changing group composition. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Want a tip? Service performance as a function of emotion regulation and extraversion.

Surface acting and deep acting with customers are strategies for service performance, but evidence for their effectiveness is limited and mixed. We propose that deep acting is an effective strategy for most employees, whereas surface acting's effect on performance effectiveness depends on employee extraversion. In Study 1, restaurant servers who tended to use deep acting exceeded their customers' expectations and had greater financial gains (i.e., tips) regardless of extraversion, whereas surface acting improved tips only for extraverts, not for introverts. In Study 2, a call center simulation, deep acting improved emotional performance and increased the likelihood of extrarole service behavior beyond the direct and interactive effects of extraversion and other Big Five traits. In contrast, surface acting reduced emotional performance for introverts and not extraverts, but only during the extrarole interaction. We discuss implications for incorporating traits into emotional labor research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using the stepladder technique to facilitate the performance of audioconferencing.

Organizational workforces are becoming increasingly dispersed. To facilitate communications among individuals or groups of people located in a number of different locations, teleconferencing technologies, such as audioconferencing, have been developed. The authors examined whether a structural group intervention, the stepladder technique, can facilitate the task performance of 4-person groups (n=52) when using audioconferencing. Consistent with research conducted on face-to-face groups, the stepladder technique was found to facilitate the decision-making performance of groups interacting via audioconference. The authors postulated that certain structural elements of the stepladder technique compensate for obstacles inherent in nonvisual communications. Supplementary analyses examined best member influence and the existence of order of entry effects into the stepladder process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relating member ability and personality to work-team processes and team effectiveness.

Six hundred fifty-two employees composing 51 work teams participated in a study examining relationships among team composition (ability and personality), team process (social cohesion), and team outcomes (team viability and team performance). Mean, variance, minimum, and maximum were 4 scoring methods used to operationalize the team composition variables to capture the team members' characteristics. With respect to composition variables, teams higher in general mental ability (GMA), conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability received higher supervisor ratings for team performance. Teams higher in GMA, extraversion, and emotional stability received higher supervisor ratings for team viability. Results also show that extraversion and emotional stability were associated with team viability through social cohesion. Implications and future research needs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The five-factor model of personality traits and organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis.

Using meta-analytic tests based on 87 statistically independent samples, we investigated the relationships between the five-factor model (FFM) of personality traits and organizational citizenship behaviors in both the aggregate and specific forms, including individual-directed, organization-directed, and change-oriented citizenship. We found that Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness/Intellect have incremental validity for citizenship over and above Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, 2 well-established FFM predictors of citizenship. In addition, FFM personality traits predict citizenship over and above job satisfaction. Finally, we compared the effect sizes obtained in the current meta-analysis with the comparable effect sizes predicting task performance from previous meta-analyses. As a result, we found that Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Extraversion have similar magnitudes of relationships with citizenship and task performance, whereas Openness and Agreeableness have stronger relationships with citizenship than with task performance. This lends some support to the idea that personality traits are (slightly) more important determinants of citizenship than of task performance. We conclude with proposed directions for future research on the relationships between FFM personality traits and specific forms of citizenship, based on the current findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dyadic performance on two tasks as a function of task difficulty, work strategy, and member ability.

Replicated the manipulation of divided and shared labor used in previous studies by the present author (see PA, Vol 49:1265 and Vol 51:2005), while varying task difficulty and member ability in order to examine their combined effects upon dyadic performance on 2 tasks: analogies and crossword puzzles. Ss were 72 US Army enlisted men; 54 had a mean of 12.4 yrs of education, and 18 were technicians with a mean of 3.6 yrs of higher education. Dividing labor was found to be more efficient in terms of man-hours to a performance criterion, but sharing labor was more effective (i.e., it produced greater total performance). The efficiency effect was more pronounced on the analogies tasks, while the effectiveness findings were more pronounced on the crossword puzzles. Results occurred across task difficulty and group ability. The hypothesis that task difficulty would indicate the importance of ability redundancy on group performance was not supported. Differences in the performance curves for the 2 tasks are discussed in terms of the role of feedback regarding the adequacy of a response to the task. It is suggested that a distinction be made between task difficulty and task complementarity when considering the effects of ability redundancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Updating the trainability tests literature on Black–White subgroup differences and reconsidering criterion-related validity.

A number of applied psychologists have suggested that trainability test Black–White ethnic group differences are low or relatively low (e.g., Siegel & Bergman, 1975), though data are scarce. Likewise, there are relatively few estimates of criterion-related validity for trainability tests predicting job performance (cf. Robertson & Downs, 1989). We review and clarify the existing (and limited) literature on Black–White group differences on trainability tests, provide new trainability test data from a recent video-based trainability exam, and present archival data about how trainability test scores relate to cognitive ability, Black–White differences, and job performance. Consistent with hypotheses, our results suggest large correlations of trainability tests with cognitive ability (e.g., .80) and larger standardized ethnic group differences than previously thought (ds of 0.86, 1.10, and 1.21 for 3 samples). Results also suggest that trainability tests have higher validity than previously thought. Overall, our analysis provides a substantial amount of data to update our understanding of the use of trainability tests in personnel selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactions in predicting mood from extraversion and neuroticism.

Many researchers have found evidence that, when only marginal distributions are examined, extraversion is related primarily to positive affect, whereas neuroticism is related primarily to negative affect. Recent findings have suggested that extraversion and neuroticism interact in predicting mood so that marginal relations could be misleading. The present study used extraversion (and its components, sociability and impulsivity) along with neuroticism in regression equations including interactive and curvilinear components to predict measures of positive and negative affect among 384 undergraduates. Results confirm earlier findings that extraversion and neuroticism interact in predicting both positive and negative affect. The interaction pattern was similar to previous findings: Both positive and negative affect were strongly related to extraversion only among neurotic Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expertise in Group Problem Solving: Recognition, Social Combination, and Performance.

This laboratory study assessed how recognition of expertise affects group decision making and performance. Three-person groups and independent individuals solved 4 intellective problem-solving tasks in 3 experimental conditions: 4 individual tasks, 1 individual task followed by 2 group tasks followed by 1 individual task, or 1 individual task followed by 2 group tasks (with intragroup rankings) followed by 1 individual task. Findings indicate that (a) both groups with ranking information and groups without are fairly well calibrated with respect to expertise, (b) group decisions were best approximated by "expert-weighted" decision schemes in which the highest performing member of the group has twice the influence of other group members, and (c) groups performed at the level of the best of an equivalent number of individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender-related individual differences and psychological adjustment in terms of the Big Five and circumplex models.

In 2 studies, college men and women were assessed on the Big Five, masculinity (M), femininity (F), gender diagnosticity (GD), and a broad array of adjustment measures, including a circumplex measure of interpersonal problems. Study 1 showed that M and F but not GD have strong Big Five and circumplex representations. Also, M and F but not GD correlates with Negative Affectivity and various interpersonal problems, and M correlates with aggressiveness in men. Study 2 replicated the main findings of Study 1 with a larger sample of participants and showed additionally that GD, but not M or F, correlates with authoritarianism and social dominance in men. Results show that the Big Five and circumplex models can be used to conceptualize gender-related individual differences, psychological adjustment, and their interrelationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Big Five Personality Traits and Individual Job Performance Growth Trajectories in Maintenance and Transitional Job Stages.

This study extends the literature on personality and job performance through the use of random coefficient modeling to test the validity of the Big Five personality traits in predicting overall sales performance and sales performance trajectories--or systematic patterns of performance growth--in 2 samples of pharmaceutical sales representatives at maintenance and transitional job stages (K. R. Murphy, 1989). In the maintenance sample, conscientiousness and extraversion were positively associated with between-person differences in total sales, whereas only conscientiousness predicted performance growth. In the transitional sample, agreeableness and openness to experience predicted overall performance differences and performance trends. All effects remained significant with job tenure statistically controlled. Possible explanations for these findings are offered, and theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Team creativity as a function of the creativity of the members.

The relationship between team performance and individual abilities was studied with creative tasks. Data from 3 experiments are presented which indicate that the conclusions of other investigators, who used manual dexterity and cognitive tasks, can be applied to creative tasks. Up to about 70% of the variance in dyadic creativity may be predicted from the individual creative abilities of the 2 members. Multiple correlations for the prediction of group performance from the knowledge of the abilities of the members did not improve when the interaction between the ability scores was considered. In 1 experiment, in which the procedure permitted the determination of the relative "dominance" of the 2 Ss, the correlations of the abilities of the dominant Ss with group performance were higher than the correlations of the abilities of nondominant Ss with group performance. The study is a 1st step towards the determination of the relationship of group and individual performance in groups composed of more than 2 individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal and environmental predictors of posttraumatic stress in emergency management professionals.

Among first responders and other emergency workers in the disaster ecology, an understudied group is that of emergency management professionals (EMP). These individuals share many of the same role conflicts and ambiguities as do health care workers and as a group have been part of national discussions about their role in post-Katrina recovery. Though they have frequent exposures to professional stressors, little is known about the personality traits, cultural issues, and role conflicts that might contribute to their ability to withstand posttraumatic stress symptoms or to grow from their work roles. This research explored 3 models that attempt to explain how previously identified personality traits and role issues such as trauma exposure, burnout, and compassion satisfaction among similar helpers and first responders might predict posttraumatic stress symptoms in EMPs. A sample of 197 participants was recruited using an online methodology, and data were analyzed using hierarchical regression. The results supported a model containing neuroticism and extraversion, trauma exposure frequency, burnout, and compassion satisfaction, accounting for the most variance in predicting PTSD symptoms. Neuroticism, burnout, and compassion satisfaction were found to be significant individual positive predictors, whereas ethnic identity did not significantly contribute to variance or serve as a moderator with trauma exposure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)