Extraversion and introversion in electronically-supported meetings

Laboratory experiments with Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) have studied their effects on group and individual outcomes, such as equality of participation, time to decision, quality of decision, consensus, and satisfaction. Research models for GDSSs include individual member characteristics as independent variables in the group process and their outcomes. How individuals feel about group meetings will influence their perception about satisfaction and participation. This study examines how individual personality characteristics influence outcomes in an electronically-supported meeting. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was used to create mixed groups of introverts and extraverts. These groups then used a traditional face-to-face meeting and a GDSS to discuss ethical scenarios. All participants contributed more original solutions in the GDSS environment than the face-to-face context but provided more comments in the traditional environment. Overall, the extraverts had more comments in both environments.