Development and Validation of a Short Measure of Emotional, Physical, and Behavioral Markers of Eustress and Distress (MEDS)

We report the results of three validation studies for a short measure of emotional, physical, and behavioral markers of eustress and distress as they occur when individuals encounter stressful events in academic and organizational settings. Given the importance of the distinction between “positive” and “negative” stress as well as the recent resurgence of research exploring the differences between challenge and hindrance stress and between eustress and distress, it is important to put forward a short, validated scale that evaluates these constructs. Our short measure—the MEDS—therefore has important theoretical as well as practical implications. By showing that the eustress and distress subscales have adequate internal consistency and good construct and criterion validity, we open new avenues for research that extends our knowledge and understanding of the antecedents and consequences of eustress and distress. We also discuss appropriate uses of the scale in educational and organizational settings

Personality and humor in groups:implications for collective emotional intelligence, psychological safety and satisfaction

Purpose: This study aims to explore the role of team personality and leader’s humor style on the use of humor in group communication and the extent to which group humor mediates the association between team personality on the one hand, psychological safety, collective emotional intelligence and group satisfaction on the other hand. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a survey to collect data from 304 employees nested in 83 groups working in organizations from various sectors in Romania. Findings: The study results show that extraversion is positively associated with group affiliative humor, while neuroticism has a positive association with group aggressive humor. The leader’s affiliative humor style had a significant positive effect on group affiliative humor, while the effect of leader’s aggressive humor style on the use of aggressive humor in groups was not significant. Furthermore, the authors examined the mediation role of group humor in the relationship between team personality and team emergent states and satisfaction. The authors found that group aggressive humor mediates the association between neuroticism and group emotional intelligence, psychological safety and satisfaction, while affiliative humor mediates the association between extraversion and emotional intelligence and team satisfaction. Originality/value: The study reports one of the first attempts to explore the multilevel interplay of team personality and humor in groups as they relate to emergent states.</p

In Leaders We Trust, or Should We?:Supervisors' Dark Triad Personality Traits and Ratings of Team Performance and Innovation

Our study tests in a sample of 87 organizational groups (297 employees and 87 supervisors) the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) and collective narcissism in the relationship between supervisors’ dark triad (SDT) personality traits and ratings of team outcomes made by supervisors and team members. We show that LMX mediates the association between SDT and team performance and innovation as rated by team members, while collective narcissism mediates the association between SDT and supervisory ratings of team innovation and team performance. Moreover, collective narcissism also mediates the association between SDT and team innovation as rated by team members. Results show that team-level performance appraisal is influenced by supervisory attributes and that the quality of relational exchanges and collective narcissism are plausible mechanisms explaining this association. The use of supervisory ratings of team outcomes in empirical research should also account for the supervisory attributes

Development and Validation of a Short Measure of Emotional, Physical, and Behavioral Markers of Eustress and Distress (MEDS)

We report the results of three validation studies for a short measure of emotional, physical, and behavioral markers of eustress and distress as they occur when individuals encounter stressful events in academic and organizational settings. Given the importance of the distinction between “positive” and “negative” stress as well as the recent resurgence of research exploring the differences between challenge and hindrance stress and between eustress and distress, it is important to put forward a short, validated scale that evaluates these constructs. Our short measure—the MEDS—therefore has important theoretical as well as practical implications. By showing that the eustress and distress subscales have adequate internal consistency and good construct and criterion validity, we open new avenues for research that extends our knowledge and understanding of the antecedents and consequences of eustress and distress. We also discuss appropriate uses of the scale in educational and organizational settings

Multiple Team Membership, Performance, and Confidence in Estimation Tasks

Multiple team membership (MTM) is a form of work organization extensively used nowadays to flexibly deploy human resources across multiple simultaneous projects. Individual members bring in their cognitive resources in these multiple teams and at the same time use the resources and competencies developed while working together. We test in an experimental study whether working in MTM as compared to a single team yields more individual performance benefits in estimation tasks. Our results fully support the group-to-individual (G-I) transfer of learning, yet the hypothesized benefits of knowledge variety and broader access to meta-knowledge relevant to the task in MTM as compared to single teams were not supported. In addition, we show that individual estimates improve only when members are part of groups with low or average collective estimation errors, while confidence in individual estimates significantly increases only when the collective confidence in the group estimates is average or high. The study opens valuable venues for using the dynamic model of G-I transfer of learning to explore individual learning in MTM