PERSONALITY, AFFECT, AND BEHAVIOR IN GROUPS

Building from an attraction-selection-attrition framework (Schneider, 1987) and the socialization literature, this study views personality, affect, and behavior as group-level phenomena. Among a sample of 26 work groups, it was found that individual affect was consistent within groups, suggesting that the affective tone of a group is a meaningful construct. Characteristic levels of the personality traits positive affectivity and negative affectivity within groups were positively associated with the positive and negative affective tones of the groups, respectively. In addition, the affective tone of a group was related to group behaviors. More specifically, the negative affective tone of a group was found to be negatively related to the extent to which the group engaged in prosocial behavior. Absenteeism by group members was negatively correlated with the positive affective tone.