Group Member Adjustment as Related to Interpersonal and Task Success and Affiliation and Achievement Motives

摘要

The purpose of the present research was to critically test the joint-influence hypothesis for a particular set of situational and personailty variables. The hypothesis was that the positive effects of task success and the negative effects of task failure would be enhanced by a member's achievement motivation. Similarly, affiliation motivation was expected to moderate interpersonal success and failure. The question was whether improved prediction of a member's adjustment could be obtained from knowledge of both the situational and personality variables, as compared with that obtained from the situational variables alone. The hypothesized moderation of interpersonal success-failure by affiliation motives was not found. Subjects' adjustment to task and interpersonal success or failure conditions, therefore, could be predicted from knowledge of these conditions alone; additional knowledge about subjects' motivation to attain either kind of success did not improve the prediction of their adjustment. More generally, the person's adjustment to the group could be predicted from knowledge of the group situation but was hardly predictable at all from knowledge of particular personality attributes which, theoretically, should have moderated the effects of the situation. The implications of these results for small group theory and the situation-personality problem were discussed.