What makes a team excel in collaboration?

How do personal traits like age, gender, cultural background, or personality influence the way individuals evaluate one another?

Our research project aims to answer these questions by exploring the relationship between similarity traits and peer evaluations in group settings.

In today’s interconnected world, diverse teams have become the norm, particularly in global virtual collaborations. These settings provide exciting opportunities for innovation but also pose challenges in communication, trust-building, and performance assessment. To better understand these dynamics, our study focuses on peer evaluations—an essential tool used to gauge individual contributions and foster accountability within teams.

The central focus of our project is to examine whether individuals with shared traits, such as age, nationality, cultural beliefs, or time zone proximity, tend to evaluate each other more favorably. We are also exploring how interpersonal factors, like communication frequency, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution styles, influence evaluations. Additionally, we are investigating group-level factors, such as team size, cultural diversity, and communication methods, to uncover their broader impact on peer assessment dynamics.

Our research leverages innovative methodologies, including dyadic multilevel modeling, to analyze a wealth of data collected from hundreds of diverse teams over multiple weeks. By capturing the intricacies of individual relationships within teams, we aim to identify patterns that reveal how similarity shapes perceptions of performance and contribution.

The findings of this study have far-reaching implications. For educators and managers, our research will provide valuable insights to design fairer evaluation systems, foster inclusivity, and enhance team collaboration. For individuals, it sheds light on unconscious biases and how they may affect professional and academic interactions.

Corresponding authors:

Jieqiong Ma, jieqiong.ma@hofstra.edu

Jie Yang. jyang@uttyler.edu

Started: Dec 10, 2024