title: Team members' emotional displays as indicators of team functioning.
abstract: Emotions are inherent to team life, yet it is unclear how observers use team members' emotional expressions to make sense of team processes. Drawing on Emotions as Social Information theory, we propose that observers use team members' emotional displays as a source of information to predict the team's trajectory. We argue and show that displays of sadness elicit more pessimistic inferences regarding team dynamics (e.g., trust, satisfaction, team effectiveness, conflict) compared to displays of happiness. Moreover, we find that this effect is strengthened when the future interaction between the team members is more ambiguous (i.e., under ethnic dissimilarity; Study 1) and when emotional displays can be clearly linked to the team members' collective experience (Study 2). These studies shed light on when and how people use others' emotional expressions to form impressions of teams.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Work and Organizational Psychology , University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Astrid C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Homan
authors.affiliation: b Department of Social Psychology , University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Gerben A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Van Kleef
authors.affiliation: c Ross School of Business , University of Michigan , Ann Arbor , MI , USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sanchez-Burks
mesh_terms: D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotions as social information; Impression formation; Sense-making; Team functioning