Personality Matters: Balancing for Personality Types Leads to Better Outcomes for Crowd Teams

When personalities clash, teams operate less effectively. Personality differences affect face-to-face collaboration and may lower trust in virtual teams. For relatively short-lived assignments, like those of online crowdsourcing, personality matching could provide a simple, scalable strategy for effective team formation. However, it is not clear how (or if) personality differences affect teamwork in this novel context where the workforce is more transient and diverse. This study examines how personality compatibility in crowd teams affects performance and individual perceptions. Using the DISC personality test, we composed 14 five-person teams (N=70) with either a harmonious coverage of personalities (balanced) or a surplus of leader-type personalities (imbalanced). Results show that balancing for personality leads to significantly better performance on a collaborative task. Balanced teams exhibited less conflict and their members reported higher levels of satisfaction and acceptan...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Ioanna Lykourentzou, Angeliki Antoniou, Yannick Naudet, Steven P. Dow
• Keywords: CSCW 2016, Social Sciences