Negative Affect Reduces Team Awareness

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: This article presents research on the effects of varying mood and stress states on within-team communication in a simulated crisis management environment, with a focus on the relationship between communication behaviors and team awareness. BACKGROUND: Communication plays a critical role in team cognition along with cognitive factors such as attention, memory, and decision-making speed. Mood and stress are known to have interrelated effects on cognition at the individual level, but there is relatively little joint exploration of these factors in team communication in technologically complex environments. METHOD: Dyadic communication behaviors in a distributed six-person crisis management simulation were analyzed in a factorial design for effects of two levels of mood (happy, sad) and the presence or absence of a time pressure stressor. RESULTS: Time pressure and mood showed several specific impacts on communication behaviors. Communication quantity and efficiency increased under time pressure, though frequent requests for information were associated with poor performance. Teams in happy moods showed enhanced team awareness, as revealed by more anticipatory communication patterns and more detailed verbal responses to teammates than those in sad moods. CONCLUSION: Results show that the attention-narrowing effects of mood and stress associated with individual cognitive functions demonstrate analogous impacts on team awareness and information-sharing behaviors and reveal a richer understanding of how team dynamics change under adverse conditions. APPLICATION: Disentangling stress from mood affords the opportunity to target more specific interventions that better support team awareness and task performance.

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