GROUP CONSENSUS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING - A LARGE FIELD-STUDY

Models of group process propose that stressful social environments dev elop when there is a lack of consensus among group members about issue s of relevance to the group. Based on these models, we expected that l evels of consensus would be positively related to the average levels o f psychological well-being in naturally occurring work groups. An exam ination of data from 3,546 respondents within 73 work groups revealed that levels of consensus about leadership and peer relations were posi tively related to the average psychological well-being of the group me mbers, even after controlling for absolute level effects and covariate s. In contrast, levels of consensus were not related to the average ps ychological well-being of group members when identical analyses were c onducted using pseudogroups.