Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 2

Communication & Psychology

Session Chair: Davide Cannata

13:10-13:35

68603 | Jokes and Quarrels:

A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Humor and Conflict Transformation in Groups

Andreea Gheorghe, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania

Petru Lucian Curseu, Open Universiteit, Netherlands

Oana Catalina Fodor, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania

This study is the first to explore the multilevel interplay of humor and intragroup conflict in cross-cultural settings and shows how various types of humor can shape the emergence of conflict and its transformation. More specifically, we investigated the relationship between different styles of humorous communication (i.e. controlling and liberating) and the type of conflict (i.e. task, process and relationship) that emerges in group contexts. We also examine whether a different cultural context (low power distance vs high power distance) moderates the association between controlling humor and relationship conflict. We collected data using a survey from 536 participants from two different countries (Romania and The Netherlands) that were working in a group in organizations from various sectors. Supporting our hypotheses, multi-level data analyses show that liberating humor has a positive association with task conflict, while controlling humor has a positive association with both process and relationship conflict. Moreover, task and conflict mediates the relationship between liberating humor and relationship conflict, while process conflict mediates the relationship between controlling humor and relationship conflict. The hypothesis regarding the moderating effect of the different cultural context was not supported by the data. The findings of our study can contribute to the literature on conflict transformation in groups, as well as help managers and organizational consultants understand how certain patterns of interpersonal communication can lead to divergent opinions and escalate into relationship conflicts that are harmful for the group.

13:35-14:00

68949 | Consequences of Friendship at Workplace, Psychological Safety, and Thriving at Work Towards Innovative Working Behaviors

Sasitorn Naenudorn, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand

At present, a technological advancement is an important instrument in measuring advantages of business competition. Personnel of the organization is a pivotal key to the organizational development. Promoting innovative behaviors in the workplace are conducive to creativities and driving the idea to reality. It is an important strategy leading to the designated goals of the organization. This research aims to study consequences of friendship at workplace, psychological safety, and thriving at work towards innovative working behaviors among personnel of telecommunication and communication service provider in Thailand. The samples were full-time employees who had been working for more than 2 years. The data were collected by a proportional stratified random sampling from 240 personnel. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis system. The results of this study are consistent with the research hypothesis. The friendship at workplace, psychological safety and thriving at work have a significant influence on innovative behaviors at work. This research can be applied in policy formulation, planning, and personnel development of organization to have more innovative behaviors at work. Increasing the level of friendship at workplace among personnel within the organization creates psychological safety and thriving at work.

14:00-14:25

68944 | Confidence and Meta-Accuracy

Davide Cannata, University of Galway, Ireland

Denis O'Hora, University of Galway, Ireland

Haojiang Ying, University of Soochow, China

of Cross-Cultural Personality Judgments

Luca Fusco, University of Napoli Parthenope, Italy

Humans use nonverbal information to make quick judgments about others’ dispositions (Breil et al., 2021; Cannata et al., 2022). Interpersonal judgments of personality are known to be to some extent accurate (Ambady et al., 1995; Connelly & Ones, 2010). However, some factors related to the target and the judge, such as their cultural similarity (Funder, 2012; Letzring, 2010) moderate the accuracy of these judgments. An understudied aspect of personality judgments relates to how confident judges are about the accuracy of their guesses (Gill et al., 1998; Praetorius et al., 2013). Based on previous literature on confidence, we identify three factors likely to influence confidence ratings: a. Amount of information, which we operationalised as targets’ expressiveness; b. Familiarity with the targets in terms of ethnicity and cultural background; c. Task fluency (which we operationalised as reaction time). Furthermore, we aimed to measure the meta-accuracy of personality judgments, which indicates if people are more accurate in recognising personality when their confidence is higher (Petty et al., 2007). Previous research suggests in the similar domain of face recognition indicates that people are not good at interpersonal meta-accuracy (Ames et al., 2010). We aim to replicate the findings in a cross-cultural context. The research will use data (at the collection stage) from 70+ Italian and 70+ Chinese participants judging 30 seconds muted videos of 50 Chinese and 50 Italian targets. We will use two multi-level models to test our hypothesis about confidence and meta-accuracy. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of the findings.