Anger and happiness in virtual teams: Emotional influences of text and behavior on others’ affect in the absence of non-verbal cues

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Abstract

Emotions carry social influence, as evident by emotion contagion – an unconscious process attributed to mimicking of non-verbal cues. We investigate whether emotion contagion can occur in virtual teams; specifically, the emotional influence of text-based and behavior-based cues on participants’ emotion in 4-person virtual teams. In a 2 × 2 design a confederate textually communicated anger or happiness, while behaving in a resolute or flexible pattern. The team task required negotiation offering a performance based reward. We demonstrate that emotion contagion occurs in teams even when communication is only text-based. We show that behaviors are perceived as emotionally charged, resolute behavior interpreted as a display of anger, and flexibility as a display of happiness. Moreover, we demonstrate that incongruence between text-based communication of emotion and emotionally charged behaviors elicits negative emotion in fellow teammates. Our findings extend the boundaries of emotion contagion and carry implications for understanding emotion dynamics in virtual teams.

Highlights

► In this study we examined the effects of emotion in virtual teams. ► We found that emotion contagion occurs even when non-verbal cues are scarce and only textual cues are present. ► Actions in negotiation were found to be emotionally charged. ► Individuals assessed angry emotions to resolute actions and happy emotion to flexible actions.

Introduction

Emotions are known to have social influence in domains such as leadership, negotiation, and conflict (e.g., Parkinson, 1996, Van Kleef, 2009). One way in which this influence occurs is through the phenomenon of emotion contagion – a powerful and fundamentally unconscious process (Hatfield et al., 1992, Neumann and Strack, 2000) commonly attributed to automatic mimicking of non-verbal cues (e.g., Hatfield et al., 1992, Totterdell, 2000). Emotion contagion has been documented in individual and group interactions (e.g., Barsade, 2002, Neumann and Strack, 2000, Pugh, 2001), but the boundaries within which it is likely to occur are unclear.

Our broad research question deals with the dynamics of emotional influence in the absence of non-verbal cues. Specifically, we address three related questions: (1) Can emotion contagion occur when communication is only text-based? (2) Do individuals interacting in mediums with limited non-verbal cues interpret behaviors of others as conveying emotional cues? (3) Can emotional effects of behaviors change the effects of direct, text-based communication of emotion? All of our analyses deal with dynamics in teams, where people work together on a team goal and depend on others for both individual and team performance.

Below, we first briefly discuss the meaning of emotion as operationalized within this paper, and the ways in which it both differs from and overlaps with the related concepts of affect and mood. We follow this with an overview of what the literature can tell us about emotion contagion in text-based (rather than face-to-face) communication. Next, we suggest that emotion can be communicated through both language and behaviors that are emotionally charged, and we consider what happens when there is incongruence between emotions communicated through text and through behavior. We then present a test of our predictions using an experimental simulation of virtual teams. We show that anger and happiness can be transferred to others through emotion contagion even in text-based communication. We further show that resoluteness and flexibility are read as expressions of anger and happiness, and that incongruence between language and these emotionally charged behaviors evokes negative emotions in team members.

Section snippets

What is an emotion (in text-based communication)?

The classic question posed by William James (1884), “What is an emotion?”, is especially complicated when emotions are considered as social entities (Hareli and Rafaeli, 2008, Parkinson, 2005), and even more so in the context of text-based communication (Parkinson, 2008). We take as a point of departure for our analysis Schwarz and Clore’s (1996) definition of emotion – namely, a feeling that arises “in response to ongoing, implicit appraisals of situations with respect to positive or negative

Emotion contagion in text-based communication

Members of teams – virtual or not – must recognize and deal with feelings in the course of their work. These feelings may then expand beyond the boundaries of the individual through the unconscious process of emotion contagion (Barsade, 2002), making emotion a property of the team (Kelly & Barsade, 2001). As described above, non-verbal cues are thought to be key to the communication of emotion (Mehrabian, 1972, Sullins, 1991), and emotion contagion (or mood contagion) is believed to arise

Social Influence of emotion in virtual teams

Additional theoretical support for H1 is afforded by the idea that social comparison (Festinger, 1954) and social information processing (Salanick & Pfeffer, 1978) influence human behavior. Festinger’s (1954) theory of social comparison holds that people’s behavior is based on their reading of others’ actions. Social information processing theory similarly positions the scanning of the social environment as influencing behaviors and feelings, such that “the social environment provides cues

Verbal and behavioral communication of emotion: emotional influence of others’ emotionally charged behaviors

Emotion can obviously be communicated directly through narrative or textual means (e.g., “I am really angry!”; “I am so happy!”). But people may also infer the emotions of others from the behaviors these others display.1 Conceptually, we suggest that certain behaviors, or behavioral

Incongruence of verbal and behavioral communications of emotion

If emotion can be communicated via both words and behavior, the question arises: What happens when the emotions conveyed through these two channels are incongruent? Nobody is surprised when words and actions are congruent – e.g., when hostile words accompany firm and resolute actions. But things become interesting when a person’s words are pleasant but his or her behavior is rigid and uncompromising. This study examines instances of such “mismatches”. We thus aim to separate the effects of

Overview and participants

Data were collected using the organizational simulation Shape Factory, which was designed to systematically study virtual teams (Bos, Olson, Nan, & Cheshin, 2009). The simulation creates the experience of a virtual team that must collaborate to accomplish both individual and group goals. Participants interact using only text-based asynchronous electronic communication on a task where both individual and team success can be rewarded. Teams work together for approximately 60 min, which enhances

Results

Table 2 presents the means, standard deviations and inter-correlations among the study variables. Data analysis was at two levels. At the team level the sample size was 123 teams and analyses followed a multilevel nested model to account for the experience of individual participants within different teams, and to allow for simultaneous consideration of both individual and group-level factors. A mixed-model analysis enables consideration of random intercepts and random slopes effects for each

Discussion

This study addressed three research questions: (1) Can emotion contagion occur when communication is only text-based? (2) Do interpersonal behaviors influence the emotions people attribute to others? (3) How is the emotion of others influenced by the congruence (or incongruence) between the emotions conveyed in text-based communication and behaviors that are perceived to be emotionally charged? Our empirical study of virtual teams working on a negotiation task demonstrates that emotion

Summary

Our study advances the theoretical understanding of emotion contagion, identifying and extending the boundaries of the conditions in which contagion occurs to include instances where communication is only text based, and to incorporate the emotional cues conveyed by behavior. The study thus challenges the existing belief that non-verbal cues are required for emotion contagion, while also adding elements of behavior to the inventory of signals at work in emotion dynamics. Organizations

Acknowledgments

This work was facilitated by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF 429/07) and with the help of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. We would like to thank Roy Israely for his contribution to this project. Moreover, we thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on a pervious version.

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