Abstract
Emotions carry social influence, as evident by emotion contagion - an unconscious process attributed to mimicking of non-verbal cues. We investigate whether emotion contagion can occur in virtual teams; specifically, the emotional influence of text-based and behavior-based cues on participants' emotion in 4-person virtual teams. In a 2 × 2 design a confederate textually communicated anger or happiness, while behaving in a resolute or flexible pattern. The team task required negotiation offering a performance based reward. We demonstrate that emotion contagion occurs in teams even when communication is only text-based. We show that behaviors are perceived as emotionally charged, resolute behavior interpreted as a display of anger, and flexibility as a display of happiness. Moreover, we demonstrate that incongruence between text-based communication of emotion and emotionally charged behaviors elicits negative emotion in fellow teammates. Our findings extend the boundaries of emotion contagion and carry implications for understanding emotion dynamics in virtual teams.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2-16 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was facilitated by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF 429/07) and with the help of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. We would like to thank Roy Israely for his contribution to this project. Moreover, we thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on a pervious version.
Keywords
- Affect
- Computer mediated communication
- Emotion
- Emotion contagion
- Emotional display
- Emotionally charged behavior
- Moods
- Social influence
- Team affect
- Virtual teams
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Applied Psychology
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management