The Effect of Affective State on Virtual and Face-to-Face Group Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between affective state and virtuality on group creativity, negotiation, and information exchange. Over 100 students watched a film clip to induce a positive or neutral mood and performed tasks as dyads or triads either face-to-face or distributedly. Although the affective state manipulation did not affect performance, the more positive affect the groups reported, the more words the groups used to communicate. Distributed groups did not generate more ideas or act less cooperatively than face-to-face groups. However, face-to-face triads performed better on the information exchange task than distributed triads; distributed dyads outperformed face-toface dyads. An interaction between affective state and group type was also found for trust in the computerized communication medium. Implications are discussed.

Advances of Research in Affective Processes in Communication and Collaboration

“…For example, it was found that positive affect relates to communication effort and trust in group decision making (Dzindolet et al, 2010); negative affect reduces team awareness in computer-mediated teams (Pfaff, 2012). Methodological explorations in the design of human agent interaction systems showed that appraisal theory can be applied to the investigation of human's emotional reactions to non-human teammates (Pepe, Sims, & Chin, 2007), and identified essential emotions that are relevant to human machine interactions (Walter et al, 2014).…”