Mood and emotions in small groups and work teams

Affective influences abound in groups. In this article we propose an organi zing model for understanding these affective influences and their effects o n group life. We begin with individual-level affective characteristics that members bring to their groups: moods, emotions, sentiments, and emotional intelligence. These affective characteristics then combine to form a group' s affective composition. We discuss explicit and implicit processes through which this affective combination occurs by examining the research on emoti onal contagion, entrainment, modeling, and the manipulation of affect. We a lso explore how elements of the affective context, such as organization-wid e emotion norms and the group's particular emotional history, may serve to constrain or amplify group members' emotions. The outcome, group emotion, r esults from the combination of the group's affective composition and the af fective context in which the group is behaving. Last, we focus on the impor tant interaction between nonaffective factors and affective factors in grou p life and suggest a possible agenda for future research. (C) 2001 Academic Press.