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Abstract

The present study tested the relationship between a group's ability to differentiate characteristics of conflict and consensus/cohesion formation. A total of 141 subjects participated in 32 problem-solving discussions. Subjects responded to a post-discussion questionnaire that assessed their ability to discriminate characteristics of four types of conflict: personalized/positive, personalized/negative, depersonalized/positive, and depersonalized/negative. The results indicated that high consensus groups had significantly higher differentiation scores on personalized/positive, depersonalized/negative, and depersonalized/positive conflicts than did low consensus groups. Also, high cohesion groups had significantly higher differentiation scores on depersonalized/positive and depersonalized/negative conflict than did low cohesion groups. Low cohesion groups, however, had significantly higher scores on personalized/negative conflict than did high cohesion groups. The results affirmed the importance of the differentiation process to group decision making and suggested additional approaches for investigating the phenomenon.

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Personalized and Depersonalized Conflict in Small Group Discussions

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