First Impressions, Team Satisfaction and Work-Related Flow: A Multilevel Analysis

摘要

First impressions of fellow team members, as well as individual satisfaction with one’s team, are each relatedto work-related flow experiences but they are rarely studied in combination. To address this gap wecollected measures of all three in a laboratory study of dyadic teams (N=55). First impressions were assessedprior to the start of a management simulation task, and both team satisfaction and work-related flowwere assessed afterwards. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that measures of team satisfaction at boththe individual and team levels were predictive of work-related flow experiences; an interaction between thediscrepancy in first impression ratings within each team and individual ratings of team satisfaction was alsofound. Findings suggest that discrepancies in first impressions interact with team satisfaction in ways thatmay negatively impact work-related flow experiences, which in turn has the potential to impair team formationand performance effectiveness of ad hoc teams.