Jennifer S. Mueller

Affect and Creativity at Work

This study explored how affect relates to creativity at work. Using both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data from the daily diaries of 222 employees in seven companies, we examined the nature, form, and temporal dynamics of the affect-creativity relationship. The results indicate that positive affect relates positively to creativity in organizations and that the relationship is a simple linear one. Time-lagged analyses identify positive affect as an antecedent of creative thought, with incubation periods of up to two days. Qualitative analyses identify positive affect as a consequence of creative thought events, as well as a concomitant of the creative process. A preliminary theory of the affect-creativity cycle in organizations includes each of these links and proposes mechanisms by which they may operate.

Academic-Practitioner Collaboration in Management Research: A Case of Cross-Profession Collaboration

We present a case of academic-practitioner research collaboration to illuminate three potential determinants of the success of such cross-profession collaborations: collaborative team characteristi...

The bias against creativity: why people desire but reject creative ideas.

People often reject creative ideas, even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt and that is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two experiments, we manipulated uncertainty using different methods, including an uncertainty-reduction prime. The results of both experiments demonstrated the existence of a negative bias against creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, this bias against creativity interfered with participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.

Does Perceived Unfairness Exacerbate or Mitigate Interpersonal Counterproductive Work Behaviors Related to Envy

The authors examined how the interaction between perceived unfairness and episodic envy predicts interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors toward the envied other. In 2 studies using different samples and methods to elicit envy, predictions were compared based on the social exchange and attribution models of fairness. The results support the social exchange model of fairness, showing that higher levels of envy and perceived unfairness result in higher levels of interpersonal counterproductive work behavior (Study 1), especially among high self-esteem individuals (Study 2).

Why Seeking Help From Teammates Is a Blessing and a Curse: A Theory of Help Seeking and Individual Creativity in Team Contexts

Research has not explored the extent to which seeking help from teammates positively relates to a persons own creativity. This question is important to explore as help seeking is commonly enacted in organizations and may come with reciprocation costs that may also diminish creativity. Results based on 291 employees in a single division of a large multinational organization revealed that seeking help predicted creativity and mediated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity. However, help seekers also incurred reciprocation costs in that they tended to give more help to teammates, and giving help to teammates was negatively related to creativity. In general, giving higher levels of help attenuated the positive relationship between help seeking and creativity. We also tested an integrated model to show that help giving moderated the mediated relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity via help seeking, such that higher levels of help giving attenuated this mediated effect. We discuss theoretical and practical implications recommending additional research regarding the interpersonal creative process in team contexts.

Emotional intelligence and counterpart mood induction in a negotiation

Purpose – This paper aims to identify whether emotional intelligence relates to counterpart outcome satisfaction in negotiation contexts.Design/methodology/approach – A negotiation simulation and a pre‐established measure of emotional intelligence were employed.Findings – In Study 1, multi‐level models revealed that a participants ability to understand emotion positively predicted his or her counterparts outcome satisfaction. Study 2 replicates and extends this finding by showing the counterparts outcome satisfaction, assessment of liking, and desire to negotiate again with the participant.Practical implications – The mechanisms identifying how participants with high levels of understanding emotion induced their counterparts with positive affect were not examined.Originality/value – This is the first empirical article to show a relationship between emotional intelligence and counterpart outcome satisfaction in a negotiation context.

The Cost of Collaboration Why Joint Decision Making Exacerbates Rejection of Outside Information

Prior investigators have asserted that certain group characteristics cause group members to disregard outside information and that this behavior leads to diminished performance. We demonstrate that the very process of making a judgment collaboratively rather than individually also contributes to such myopic underweighting of external viewpoints. Dyad members exposed to numerical judgments made by peers gave significantly less weight to those judgments than did individuals working alone. This difference in willingness to use peer input was mediated by the greater confidence that the dyad members reported in the accuracy of their own estimates. Furthermore, dyads were no better at judging the relative accuracy of their own estimates and the advisor’s estimates than individuals were. Our analyses demonstrate that, relative to individuals, dyads suffered an accuracy cost. Specifically, if dyad members had given as much weight to peer input as individuals working alone did, then their revised estimates would have been significantly more accurate.

Looking down: the influence of contempt and compassion on emergent leadership categorizations

By integrating the literatures on implicit leadership and the social functions of discrete emotions, we develop and test a theoretical model of emotion expression and leadership categorizations. Specifically, we examine the influence of 2 socio-comparative emotions-compassion and contempt-on assessments of leadership made both in 1st impression contexts and over time. To demonstrate both internal and external validity, Studies 1a and 1b provide laboratory and field evidence to show that expressing the discrete emotions of contempt and compassion positively relates to perceptions that an individual is a leader. Study 2 tests the mechanism explaining these associations. Specifically, we show that in a leadership emergence context, contempt and compassion both positively relate to perceptions that the expresser is a leader because each provides cues matching the implicit theory that leaders have higher intelligence. Our findings add to a growing body of literature focused on identifying the processes through which leaders emerge in groups, showing that emotions are an important input to this process. We discuss the implications of our findings and how they might guide future research efforts.

Groups Weight Outside Information Less Than Individuals Do, Although They Shouldn’t: Response to Schultze, Mojzisch, and Schulz-Hardt (2013)

By suggesting that dyads should give less weight to outside advice than individuals should, Schultze, Mojzisch, and Schulz-Hardt (2013) raise important questions re garding whether and when collaborative judgment outperforms individual judgment. The authors argue that, normatively, the judgments of dyads should be weighted twice as heavily as those of individuals because the former are made up of two independent inputs, whereas the latter are a product of solitary contemplation. The problem, however, is that estimates produced by dyads are not actually made up of two independent inputs. Prior work suggests that group interaction creates shared perspectives, viewpoints, emotions, and cognitions, such that any member’s contribution reflects and is influenced by the group’s contribution (Kenny, Mannetti, Pierro, Livi, & Kashy, 2002; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Thus, group members should not be treated as independent individuals but rather as interdependent contributors (Nezlek & Zyzniewski, 1998; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). In the research that Schultze et al. address (Minson & Mueller, 2012), we asked dyad members to interact without initially committing to individual estimates—a common practice in many real-world judgment contexts. How did such joint estimation affect their judgments? To answer this question, we first compared the error of dyads’ initial estimates with the error of estimates that would have resulted if participants in the individualjudge/individual-advisor condition averaged their judgments with those of their advisor. We found that dyads’ estimates were less accurate (M = 40.4 percentage points) than those produced by averaging the estimates of two independent individuals (M = 34.4 percentage points), b = −0.060, z = −2.19, p < .03, which suggests that dyads’ judgments should not be weighted as heavily. Furthermore, we can calculate the weight that participants should have given to peer input on any given item in order to reach the correct answer. In the conditions in which dyads received input from dyads and individuals received input from individuals, the result had to be (and was) 50%. However, the conditions of interest are the ones in which dyads received input from individuals and vice versa. In those cases, reaching the correct answer would have required that dyads yield 52.9% of the weight toward the estimates of individuals and individuals yield 47.1% toward the estimates of dyads! These weights are not significantly different from 50% (or from each other) and are far from the 66.7% vs. 33.3% benchmark proposed by Schultze et al. Furthermore, if these weights (which account for the nonindependence introduced by making judgments jointly) are used as the “rational weights” in Table 1 of Schultze et al., the conclusions will be the same as those in our research: namely, that dyads are more biased than individuals in their use of advice. These data did not allow us to address the psychological processes that lead to such rapid loss of independence on the part of dyad members. Although the fact that the judgments of interacting group members are not independent, it is somewhat surprising that such judgments do not more closely resemble the sum of their independent parts. The Schultze et al. commentary exposes a need for future research in this domain. Researchers, managers, and consumers would benefit from a deeper understanding of when, why, and to what extents two heads are truly better than one. 476894 PSSXXX10.1177/0956797613476894Group Judgment XX (X)Minson, Mueller research-article2013