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Do They See A Half-Full Water Cooler? Relationships Among Group Optimism Composition, Group Performance, And Cohesion, William P. Jimenez, Xiaoxiao Hu, Chad Kenneally, Feng Wei

Psychology Faculty Publications

In the present study, relationships among group composition of trait optimism (the mean, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum scores of optimism), group cohesion, and three group performance variables (task performance, contextual performance, and creative performance) were examined. Multi-source data were collected from 56 workgroups including 202 group members and 56 group leaders. We found that the mean, maximum, and minimum operationalizations of group optimism composition were positively related to the three group performance variables and that group cohesion mediated the optimism–performance relationships for the mean and minimum operationalizations of group optimism. We recommend that practitioners generally consider selecting optimistic …