Keywords

Shared mental model, teams, openness to experience, team member replacement, learning

Abstract

This study examined the effect of various individual differences on accuracy of incoming team members’ learning the team’s task and team shared mental models by leveraging literature on shared mental models and team member replacement. The four individual differences (openness to experience, perspective taking, social curiosity and trait negative affect) were hypothesized to positively impact the incoming team member’s ability to understand the team’s shared mental models through the theoretical mechanism of cue identification. Participants were asked to imagine they were entering a student organization executive team and based on characteristics (responsibilities, preferences, attitudes) of the team members in the video of their previous meeting, assign tasks for an upcoming event through a card sort activity and assign informal roles to each team member. The correctness of the card sort activity served as the measure of task shared mental model learning accuracy, while the correctness of the role assignment activity acted as the measure of team shared mental model learning accuracy. Results indicated that while individual characteristics of the incoming team member (specifically openness to experience) did predict accuracy of learning the team shared mental model, the relationship with task shared mental model learning accuracy was not significant. Supplementary analysis revealed that perspective taking predicted higher level learning accuracy. Limitations of this study and recommendations for future research addressing the connection between team member replacement and shared mental models will be discussed.

Completion Date

2025

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Ehrhart, Mark

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Identifier

DP0029301

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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