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The present study examined attitudes toward diversity as a moderator of outcomes of diversity in workgroups. Two studies were conducted that focused on the development of the Attitudes Toward Diverse Workgroups Scale (ADWS) and on the impact of diversity attitudes on task performance and psychological reactions in actual face-to-face diverse brainstorming groups. The first study supported the internal consistency and stability of the ADWS and revealed that it was related, in the predicted way, to the Big Five and general prejudice. The second study revealed that high scores on the productive and affective dimensions of the ADWS enhanced brainstorming performance (quality of ideas) in actual diverse groups and positive psychological reactions to the group experiences, respectively.

In many meetings and work sessions, group members exchange ideas in order to come up with novel, creative solutions for problems and to generate ideas for future innovations. This type of group idea generation or brainstorming process has been studied in detail, and we have discovered much about the cognitive and social processes that underlie group idea generation. It appears that the brainstorming performance of groups is often hindered by various social and cognitive influences, but under the appropriate conditions, group idea exchange can be quite effective. In this article, we summarize the present state of knowledge, point out some significant gaps in our knowledge, and suggest a cognitive-social-motivational perspective to integrate the major findings and to guide future research in the area of group creativity and group idea generation.

On voit apparaitre une nouvelle litte´rature traitant de la cre´ativite´ et de l’innovation dans les groupes et les e´quipes. Bien que de nombreaux facteurs inhibent la cre´ativite´ des groupes, nos investigations et analyses indiquent que l’interaction dans les groupes et e´quipes serait une source fe´conde d’innovations et d’ide´es cre´atives. On pre´sente dans cet article un mode`le the´orique de la cre´ativite´ dans les groupes producteurs d’ide´es et l’impact sur le travail en e´quipe et les recherches a` venir. There is an emerging literature on group and team creativity and innovation. Although there are many factors that appear to inhibit creativity in groups, our review and analysis suggests that interaction in groups and teams can be an important source of creative ideas and innovations. A theoretical model of creativity in idea-generating groups is developed and implications for teamwork and future research are presented.

The present study was designed to construct and revalidate the Crowding Experience Scale and to investigate its predictive validity. Factor analysis results suggest that perceived crowding is comprised of four components, labelled as spaciousness, positive relationships, negative relationships, and uncontrolled disturbance. The factor-derived perceived crowding subscales showed unique relationships with the outcome variables related to health, well-being, and residential satisfaction. The results provide some indication that perceived crowding mediates the relationship between objective crowding and the dependent measures. The implications of the project are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Army families living in apartments and mobile homes near a large Army base were assessed for feelings about their housing, morale, marital harmony, health, and well-being. Reactions to mobile homes and apartments were similar. Higher quality housing was associated with positive housing ratings but not with more favorable morale, harmony, health, or well-being. The experience of housing problems is related to negative housing evaluation, while the experience of Army lifestyle problems is related to lowered morale, harmony, health, and well-being. Results were generally similar for enlisted men and their spouses.

Two studies were conducted to examine the influence of individual and group goal setting on brainstorming performance. Results from the studies indicated that the individual goals of nominal participants were higher than the individual goals of interactive participants. Group goal setting by consensus led to the lowest goals. There was no influence of goal setting on group brainstorming performance. However, participants who set goals rated their individual performance more favorably than did participants who did not set goals. The low group goals set by interactive groups are discussed in terms of assumptions made regarding the ability of other group members and the detrimental effects of group interaction.

Sixty male and 60 female subjects previously classified as high and low on a residential crowding experience scale participated in an experiment involving a 2 × 3 × 2 × 2 (density, noise, crowding experience, gender) factorial design. The research was undertaken primarily to determine the influence of previous residential crowding experience as tapped by the Crowding Experience Scale (CES) on reactivity to the environmental stressors of noise and crowding. The results indicated that exposure to environmental stressors produced a deleterious effect on complex task performance and generated negative affect in the respondents. Interestingly, respondents who had reported high levels of experience with crowding showed relatively more crowding tolerance by performing significantly better on cognitively complex tasks (complex anagrams and story comprehension) and exhibiting more positive affect in conditions of high density as compared to low experience of crowding respondents. Reactions to noise were not influenced by crowding experience. Thus, prior experience of crowding as measured by the CES appears to influence reactivity to density in other settings.

Inmates at a federal correctional institution were examined for their criterion of what constitutes overcrowding. In general, inmates who were housed under highly crowded conditions exhibited less tolerance of overcrowding than did those who were housed under relatively less crowded conditions. Higher crowding also yielded more negative affective responses to the physical environment. This relationship existed only with respect to a social-density measure of crowding and not for a spatial-density measure.

The effects of reduced enrollment were studied by examining two architecturally identical schools. One school experienced a 43% reduction in enrollment while the other's enrollment remained constant. Reduction in enrollment had a number of positive benefits, including improved attitudes about the school environment and reduced faculty absenteeism. Findings regarding academic performance were less clear.