Implicit Interpersonal Attraction in Small Groups

• Applicant: Dr. Sascha Krause
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 323688639

Evaluations of interpersonal attraction between members of small groups can affect the performance of these groups. In the last two decades, different meta-analyses have shown that small groups with a high degree of interpersonal attraction are on average more powerful than groups with a low degree of interpersonal attraction. To date, self-report measures are widely used in psychological assessments of interpersonal attraction between group members. Although such questionnaire techniques are useful for predicting group performance, they are also subject to well-known limitations, in-cluding impression management tendencies and the limits of self-awareness. Moreover, self-reports cannot be used to assess the implicit (i.e., automatically activated) evaluation of a group member. Recently, my research (Krause, Back, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2014) showed for the first time that a group variant of the affective priming task (small group APT) can provide a reliable and valid assessment of implicit evaluations of other members. The goal of this DFG project is to be the first to investigate the consequences of implicit interpersonal attraction (compared with explicit interpersonal attraction) on group performance. Furthermore, on the basis of a new conceptual framework, this project aims to investigate which interpersonal behaviors mediate the relationship between interpersonal attraction and performance. The respective findings will be innovative in nature because previous small group research has not empirically investigated the influence of actual interpersonal behavior on group performance. The additional use of the small-group APT should-according to the assumptions of dual process models-lead to an improved (i.e., incremental) prediction of interpersonal behaviors. A third aim of the DFG project is to investigate the reciprocal relationships between interpersonal attraction and group performance (Does interpersonal attraction more strongly affect group performance, or does group performance more strongly affect interpersonal attraction?). To answer this question, the project is planned as a longitudinal study in which interpersonal attraction and group performance will be measured on three separate occasions. On the one hand, the respective findings will be relevant for research on explicit interpersonal attraction and group performance because previous (explicit) research has not examined reciprocal relations between the pure interpersonal attraction facet (as one component of the cohesion construct) and group performance. On the other hand, it appears that this longitudinal study will be the first to investigate the reciprocal relationships between implicit interpersonal attraction and group performance.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants