SHARED ANXIETY AND GROUP EFFECTIVENESS - THE ROLE OF NARROWING INTERACTIONS

SHARED ANXIETY AND GROUP EFFECTIVENESS

  This research explores how negative emotions shared among group members influence group effectiveness, and how narrowing interactions mediate this relationship. Prior research has neither conceptually specified nor empirically tested the causal mechanisms that explain how and why group emotions influence group outcomes. I seek to fill this gap by introducing narrowing interactions as a group level mechanism. Drawing from the psychological theory of emotions (e.g., Easterbrook, 1959) and the threat-rigidity hypothesis (Staw, Sandelands & Dutton, 1981), I propose that group members that share an emotion of anxiety will exhibit more frequent narrowing interactions (i.e., planning, monitoring and critical evaluation) than those that share neutral emotions. In turn, narrowing interactions are expected to enhance group decision quality but decrease group creativity and member learning. I discuss the theoretical contributions of the research to group, individual emotions, and group emotions literatures, as well as the future research directions.