title: When sad groups expect to meet again: interactive affective sharing and future interaction expectation as determinants of work groups' analytical and creative task performance.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogics, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Annefloor H M
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Klep
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wisse
authors.forename: Henk
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: van der Flier
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult