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The Members and Their Roles 121

behavior—when team members willingly volunteer to help team members work toward
team goals—in groups that were homogenous (members from the same country) and
heterogeneous (members from different countries). As might be expected, agreeable-
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ness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience were positively related to group
good citizenship behaviors in both types of groups. Neuroticism was positively related
in homogeneous groups but negatively related in heterogeneous groups. The authors
believe that being in a setting that is unfamiliar (i.e., with group members from differ-
ent countries) produces stress in persons high in neuroticism; the resulting anxiety
produces maladaptive behavior in the group. This finding has great relevance to our
discussion of group diversity in this and the previous chapter.
Bell’s meta-analysis reviewing both field and lab studies found similar results. In
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lab studies, personality factors had negligible results, but in field studies, agreeable-
ness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability (analogous to neuroticism) were
related to team performance, as was preference for working in teams. She notes that
in the field groups have to handle many types of tasks at once, where in the lab they
are usually limited to one task. Certainly many factors including team composition,
team structure, and team setting influence team performance.
Having members with a variety of traits and personality characteristics in a group
increases the group’s challenge. It is a lot easier to work with people who are similar to
you—you can take many things for granted and you do not have to work so hard at com-
municating well. In fact, a recent review of 31 studies of group personality composition
found that group effectiveness suffered when members were more dissimilar to one
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another. This same review found that group members’ ability to work collaboratively in
real-world, task-oriented groups was improved when members had relationship-oriented
personality traits such as agreeableness, emotional stability, and helpfulness. As we noted
in Chapter 4, a relationship focus does not cancel out a task focus, and vice versa.
Relationship and task communication support each other, to the benefit of the S group.
In short, groups need members with a variety of traits and personality characteris-
tics, but this variety makes communication more difficult. But regardless of how different
a group’s members may be, that group can succeed if members are willing to appreciate
and capitalize on each other’s differences. The personality characteristics just discussed
are not visible, like sex and age. They are examples of the deep diversity described in
Chapter 4 and are just as important as the cultural diversity discussed in that chapter.
Traits and personality characteristics are examples of input variables that already
exist when a group is formed and that influence members’ communication behavior
in groups. This behavior—the key element in a group’s throughput process—affects the
roles that develop within the group. We discuss roles and their development in the Role
next section. A pattern of behavior
displayed by and
expected of a
Development of Group Roles member of a small
group; a composite
Like a role in a play or movie, a member’s role represents the cluster of behaviors of a group member’s
performed by that member and the overall functions those behaviors perform for the frequently performed
group. One actor’s role interlocks with the roles of the other actors; so it is with behavioral functions.
groups, as one member’s role interlocks with the other members. And, like

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