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When sad groups expect to meet again: Interactive affective sharing and future interaction expectation as determinants of work groups' analytical and creative task performance
Author(s) -
Klep Annefloor H. M.,
Wisse Barbara,
Flier Henk
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/bjso.12000
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , psychology , task (project management) , social psychology , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , salient , fluency , working group , work (physics) , group work , group (periodic table) , cognitive psychology , communication , computer science , mechanical engineering , pedagogy , chemistry , mathematics education , management , organic chemistry , artificial intelligence , engineering , economics , operating system
The present study examines the moderating role of future interaction expectation in the relationship between affective sharing and work groups' task performance. We argue that group affect, a group defining characteristic, becomes more salient to its members when it is interactively shared, and that the anticipation of future interaction may strengthen the effects of group defining characteristics on subsequent group member behaviour. As a consequence, interactive sharing (vs. non‐interactive sharing) of negative affect is more likely to influence work group outcomes when group members expect to meet again. Results from a laboratory experiment with 66 three‐person work groups indeed show that interactively shared (vs. non‐interactively shared) negative affect facilitated work groups' analytical task performance, whereas it inhibited performance on a creative fluency task when groups have expectations of future interaction and not when they do not have such expectations. The discussion focuses on how these results add to theory on group affect and contribute to insights in the effects of future interaction expectation.