Nikhil Awasty, assistant professor of organizational behavior, is co-author on a paper recently accepted at Human Resource Management.
The paper is titled “I’m Not Feeling It: The Role of Affective Diversity in Risk Management and Team Performance”
In the paper, Awasty and his coauthors uncover the hidden power of emotional diversity within teams, showing how a mix of emotions—both positive and negative—can be the key to smarter, more balanced decision-making.
Picture a team where some members feel optimistic and energized, while others are more cautious or concerned. This emotional variety, “affective diversity,” equips teams to handle complex challenges that demand both taking risks and exercising caution. Rather than pushing teams to feel uniformly upbeat or cautious, the study reveals that blending these emotional perspectives fosters stronger performance by helping teams weigh decisions more effectively.
In a series of carefully designed team tasks, the research found that positive emotions—like enthusiasm or excitement—spark a team’s appetite for high-reward strategies, encouraging them to take bold actions when appropriate. On the other hand, when some team members feel more cautious or wary, the team is more inclined to pursue safer, more calculated moves.
Interestingly, the research discovered that prevention-focused teams, those more sensitive to potential losses, thrive with a bit of negative emotional diversity, while promotion-focused teams, oriented toward potential gains, respond better to the upbeat energy brought by positive emotional diversity.
The study breaks away from traditional views, showing that positive and negative emotions within teams aren’t opposing forces on a single scale. Instead, they function independently, offering teams a richer set of informational cues that guide them toward balanced, well-rounded decisions.
For managers and team leaders, these insights suggest practical ways to leverage emotional diversity to enhance team performance. By encouraging a mix of emotional perspectives through training and thoughtful team composition, leaders can create teams that are not only more resilient but also better equipped to tackle high-stakes, complex tasks that require both creativity and careful analysis.
