How Personality and Communication Patterns Affect Online ad-hoc Teams Under Pressure

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Team Dynamics

Background:

• Effective teamwork is crucial for critical, time-bound tasks like incident response.
• Limited research exists on personality's impact on stranger collaboration in high-pressure, ad-hoc scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the influence of personality traits on the performance and collaboration quality of virtual dyads in a high-pressure, time-bound task.
• To explore communication patterns and their relation to team roles and outcomes.

Main Methods:

• 120 crowd participants were paired into 60 virtual dyads to complete a simulated high-pressure task.
• Analysis included performance outcomes, communication patterns, and self-reported collaboration quality.
• Personality traits (e.g., Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness) and gender were assessed.

Main Results:

• Teams with higher minimum levels of Openness to Experience were more successful in completing the task on time.
• Successful teams utilized more action and response statements in communication.
• High Agreeableness correlated with better coping with failure; heterogeneous Conscientiousness related to better perceived collaboration quality.
• Gender may also influence performance.

Conclusions:

• Personality traits, particularly Openness to Experience, significantly impact performance in ad-hoc, high-stress virtual teams.
• Communication patterns are linked to team roles and perceived collaboration quality.
• Findings can inform the development of AI systems for optimizing crowdsourced emergency response teams.