Using a meta-analytical procedure, the relationship between team composition in terms of the Big-Five personality traits (trait elevation and variability) and team performance were researched. The number of teams upon which analyses were performed ranged from 106 to 527. For the total sample, significant effects were found for elevation in agreeableness (r ¼ 0.24) and conscientiousness (r ¼ 0.20), and for variability in agreeableness (r ¼ À0.12) and conscientiousness (r ¼ À0.24). Moderation by type of team was tested for professional teams versus student teams. Moderation results for agreeableness and conscientiousness were in line with the total sample results. However, student and professional teams differed in effects for emotional stability and openness to experience. Based on these results, suggestions for future team composition research are presented.

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Relationships between team composition in terms of team members' Big Five personality traits and individual satisfaction with the team after project completion were researched. Questionnaires were filled out by 310 undergraduate students ( N= 68 teams) working on an engineering design assignment. Individual satisfaction with the team was regressed onto individual, dissimilarity, and interaction scores. A positive main effect was found for individual agreeableness and emotional stability and for dissimilarity in conscientiousness. A moderation of the main effect of dissimilarity was found for extraversion: Satisfaction with the team is negatively related to dissimilarity to the other team members only for members low in extraversion.

This article presents a study on Van Tuijl's (1975) neon effect. The neon effect can be described as an illusory spreading of color around the colored elements of an otherwise black line pattern. The observer has a strong impression of colored light projected onto a lattice of black lines. The hypothesis is advanced that the neon effect will only result if the structural relationships between black and colored line elements in the pattern are such that a neon interpretation is the most efficient interpretation that can be given of the pattern. The necessity of this approach to the neon phenomenon emanates from the inadequacy of alternative, more simple, explanations, such as aberrations of peripheral perceptual mechanisms or the presence in the pattern of easily definable stimulus features. To subject the hypothesis proposed above to experimental test, a precise quantification of its central concept, the efficiency of pattern interpretations, is needed. To that end, Leeuwenberg's (1971) coding language for sequential patterns is introduced. By means of the coding language, pattern interpretations can be represented in a pattern code, the length of which is inversely proportional to the efficiency of the interpretation coded. Several possible interpretations of color differences between the elements of line patterns are discussed, and it is shown how the efficiency of each of them can be determined. Next, in two experiments, the efficiency of the neon interpretation relative to that of alternative interpretations of color differences in line patterns is varied, by manipulating the structural relations between black and colored line elements, and the dependency of the neon effect on the relative efficiency of the neon interpretation is demonstrated. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The neon effect, i.e. an illusion of light projected onto a homogeneous lattice, may occur in line patterns made up of elements of different color or brightness. Particular luminance relations between the different line elements in the patterns and between these line elements and their background appear to be critical for the occurrence of the effect.