DIVERSITY IN TEAMS, INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVE TAKING, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON HELPING WITHIN THE TEAM

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DIVERSITY IN TEAMS, INDIVIDUAL

PERSPECTIVE TAKING, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON

HELPING WITHIN THE TEAM

Master thesis, Msc Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

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ABSTRACT

The present research focuses on the way individual perspective-taking affects the influence of diversity in a team on helping behavior. Through an empirical study among 307 university students, I show that helping is negatively related to diversity in teams. Second, I also show that perspective-taking is positively related to helping in teams. However, the hypothesized moderation effect of perspective-taking on the negative relationship between diversity and helping was not confirmed. These findings suggest that organizations should consider the individual perspective-taking of team members in order to increase a positive working climate.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Diversity in the work place is an inevitable part of the 21st Century organization. In The Netherlands, for example, the multicultural influences are evident, as immigration and integration have always been important factors in Dutch society (see CBS for details1). This diversity paired with the increasing tendency to introduce working in teams within the organization means that people with different backgrounds, skills, and values will be working in proximity (Milliken & Martins, 1996). Increasing diversity paired with more team-based work, creates challenges for the organization (Harrison & Klein, 2007; Jackson, Joshi & Erhardt, 2003; Milliken & Martins, 1996; Tsui, Egan & O‟Reilly, 1992; Williams, Parker & Turner, 2007). This thesis examines how a specific individual-level difference, perspective-taking, affects the way that diversity operates within a team-level context.

When doing a literature search for „diversity‟, it becomes apparent that

sociological, psychological, as well as organizational research on this topic has increased significantly in the past decades. Scientific literature sources such as SocIndex, PsycInfo and Business Source Premier have all shown the same tendency: until the 1970‟s there were a few hundred „hits‟ on diversity, from 1970 to 1990 these data increased to

approximately four times as many hits. And from 1990 SocIndex found more than 17.000 hits, PsycInfo more than 20.000 hits and Business Source Premier almost 28.000 hits.2

There is no doubt that diversity research is important. Not only because of the ambiguous theories and empirical results on the effects of diversity, but because

organizations and managers need to be able to understand how to constructively deal with the challenges of diversity.Even when people generally respond positively to the idea of diversity and are receptive to promoting it, how to operate in a diverse context generates disagreement. Many researchers argue that diversity offers both a great opportunity for organizations, as well as a great challenge. On the one hand, diversity might lead to more innovation, creativity, and high-quality solutions because teams can use a wide range of perspectives. On the other hand, increasing diversity in the work place might lead to conflict, dissatisfaction and turnover due to decreased team integration (see for an overview Milliken & Martins, 1996; Jackson et al., 2003; Jehn, Northcraft & Neale, 1999; Mannix & Neale, 2005; Webber & Donahue, 2001; Williams & O‟Reilly, 1998). This paradox has led Milliken and Martins to conclude that “diversity thus appears to be a double-edged sword” (1996: 403).

Given the importance of diversity and teams in modern organizations, it is crucial for managers to understand how these two variables relate to each other to affect essential organizational outcomes. One such outcome is helping. Helping here is defined as

1_{CBS, or „Statistics Netherlands‟ (in Dutch: „Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek‟) is „responsible for} collecting and processing data in order to publish statistics to be used in practice, by policymakers and for scientific research‟, as stated on their website http://www.cbs.nl.

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interpersonal organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that is (1) affiliative, (2) co-operative and (3) directed at other individuals (Mossholder, Richardson & Settoon, 2011). Helping in organizations is crucial because it creates a positive climate by favorably affecting others (Mackenzie, Podsakoff & Fetter, 1991; Mossholder et al., 2011). A positive climate within a team is beneficial for the overall team performance, as well as for individual well-being. A positive climate in organizational teams also promotes organizational features like a common identity and feelings of cohesiveness (Ellemers, De Gilder, & Van den Heuvel, 1998). Helping others with both work-related and personal issues is one factor in increasing a positive context. While persons might feel the need to work together on group tasks because it is part of their job description, helping others within one‟s team is not usually a required part of one‟s work. Therefore, helping team members can be an altruistic gesture, even when help is given on team- or task-related problems. A positive climate may also be created or promoted by interdependency and more responsibility in decision-making through flatter and more decentralized structures (Rink & Ellemers, 2007a). In fact, helping and a positive organizational or team climate may positively influence each other in mutual reinforcement. While helping other team members may promote a positive climate, this positive climate itself promotes prosocial behavior, such as helping.

As said, helping might positively affect the organizational climate – and thereby other organizational outcomes, such as productivity or efficiency. However, individuals might not help other members of their team equally or indiscriminately. This „selective helping‟ might be a particularly pronounced problem when individuals work in diverse teams. Following the homophily-principle (Abelson, 1964; Axelrod, 1997; Blau, 1977; Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve & Tsai, 2004; Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954; McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001; Moody, 2001), people generally tend to interact more with others who are similar. Homophily is defined by McPherson and colleagues (2001) as ‘the principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people’ (McPherson et al., 2001:416). Feld (1981) distinguished two types of homophily: structural and behavioral homophily. Structural homophily relates to context-dependent opportunities for contact, which indicates that, despite one‟s preferences, opportunities to meet (Mollenhorst, 2009) affect the commencement of connections. In other words, a person‟s preferences for interpersonal connections are restricted by the opportunities he or she has for contact. For example, in schools the opportunities to meet depend on the organization of the school, whereby students have more opportunities to meet with others in the same class than with those in different classes.

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Teams are more and more diverse as a result of organizations wanting to make use of different perspectives when attending to issues. Thus, people with different backgrounds, skills, and perspectives are deliberately put together to work in teams. When both structural and behavioral differences exist, homophily may be very strong. However, in teams there are similar opportunities to meet, thus structural differences are minimalized. Therefore, only behavioral homophily is a threat to successful teams in organizations.

While structural differences between people are clearly visible, behavioral

differences not always are. Furthermore, people may not use the same traits to distinguish themselves and others or use them to the same extent. The way in which people perceive others as being different may thus vary between persons. One of the potential

intrapersonal conditions under which people may differ in their perceptions towards diversity is individual perspective-taking. Perspective-taking is defined as „the ability to understand the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others‟ (Davis, 1980; Davis, 1983). It depends on several factors, including core belief systems, ideologies, social reward seeking, and education, which influence one‟s basic perceptual frame of reference (Levy, Freitas & Salovey, 2002). Taking the perceptions of others into account may produce prosocial outcomes (Brewer & Miller, 1988; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), one of which is helping others when they need it (Levy et al., 2002). When taking perspectives into account, one may (1) focus less on surface-level characteristics because he or she tries to see through these characteristics and (2) feel more similarity towards others in deep-level characteristics due to a sort of merging of self and other that occurs with perspective-taking. Thus, perspective-taking may decrease the tendency for persons to approach dissimilar others differently and thereby decrease the homophily-effect in helping other team members.

The current research focuses on the way individual perspective-taking affects the influence of diversity in a team on helping behavior. First, in the theory section, I outline theories on diversity, homophily, helping behavior, and individual perspective-taking. I then formulate hypotheses and present a conceptual model. Following, in the method section, I explain the research design and measures. Then, in the results section, I present the outcomes of the analyses. Finally, in the discussion section, I address the findings and give suggestions for future research.

2. THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

In this section I will first discuss and define the main variables and concepts for this research. Following that, I will present the hypotheses.

2.1 Variables

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different from self‟ (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004:1008). Others have defined diversity in its broadest sense as anything people could use to tell that they themselves and another person are different (Jehn, Greer & Rupert, 2008; Mannix & Neale, 2005; Williams & O‟Reilly, 1998). Some researchers categorize diversity into two types: (1) observable or readily detectable attributes, such as race, age, or gender and (2) less observable or underlying attributes such as education, functional background, or personality

characteristics (Jackson et al., 1995; Tsui et al., 1992). These categorizations may also be referred to as surface-level and deep-level differences (Harrison et al., 1998; Harrison et al., 2002; Jackson et al., 1995; Mannix & Neale, 2005; Milliken & Martins, 1996; Tyran & Gibson, 2008). Others make a distinction between non-task-related diversity, such as age and gender, and task-related diversity, like tenure or function (Webber & Donahue, 2001).

Helping. I define helping as engaging in interpersonal organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that is (1) affiliative, (2) co-operative, and (3) directed at other individuals

(Mossholder et al., 2011). While helping is often referred to as assisting or supporting others, it also includes sharing knowledge or limited resources. More specifically, in this research the focus is on work-related helping in the broadest sense. Helping colleagues on work-related issues is a crucial part of collaboration in an organization. It improves organizational effectiveness and efficiency (Mackenzie et al., 1991; Mossholder et al., 2011). Furthermore, work groups with high levels of support within the group tend to perform more creatively (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron, 1996, pp. 263 in: Mueller & Kamdar, 2011), and that, in turn, leads to more innovation and competitive advantage (Mueller & Kamdar, 2011).

Homophily. In general, people tend to interact more with similar others. Theories (Abelson, 1964; Axelrod, 1997; Blau, 1977), as well as empirical research (see Wood, 2000 for a comprehensive review), showed this effect in dyadic interactions. This tendency to interact with similar others, or the tendency of „birds of a feather flock together‟ has consistently been identified as a strong force in social interactions (McPherson et al., 2001) and is prominently supported by a large body of empirical research (e.g., Brass et al., 2004; Byrne, 1971; Homans, 1951; Kandel, 1978; Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954; Moody, 2001; Rogers & Bhowmik, 1970).This finding suggests that when in groups, people do not treat others equal, but rather vary their interactions on the basis of their similarity.

Perspective-taking. People differ in their abilities to understand the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others (Davis, 1983). When people take the perspectives of others into account, they merge the self with the other. The self-other distinction therefore gets blurred, and personal differences become less pronounced (Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce & Neuberg, 1997). Early in the 1930‟s theories already suggested that the ability to take another‟s perspective had positive effects on many components of human social capital (Mead, 1934; Piaget, 1932; both in: Davis, Conklin, Smiths, & Luce, 1996). Perspective-taking was later found to be positively correlated with social competence and self-esteem (Davis, 1983), as well as with altruism (Batson, 1991; Batson, 1998) and helping

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seen to reduce the use of stereotypes in courtroom verdicts or employee promotion decisions (Bodenhausen & Wyers, 1985; Fiske, Bersoff, Borgida, Deaux & Heliman, 1991; both in: Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000:709). Perceived connections to others may affect the use of stereotypes (Brewer & Miller, 1988), in the sense that perspective-taking may take over the role of stereotyping as categorization process. Perspective-taking is argued to be a better way to decrease stereotyping than is active suppression of stereotyping (Bilewicz, 2009).

2.2 Hypotheses

Effect of diversity on helping behavior. Research has shown that greater similarity to a potential recipient of help increases the probability that helping will occur (Sole, Marton & Hornstein, 1975). There has been a lot of research on willingness to help each other, to share knowledge and limited resources, and to support each other when needed. Several researchers have found evidence that people are more willing to help people of the same race, sex, attitude, ethnicity or political opinions (Bilewicz, 2009; Crosby, Bromley & Saxe, 1980; Sole et al., 1975; Wegner & Crano, 1975). This suggests that diversity has a negative effect on helping behavior.

In organizations helping is important but diversity is inevitable. This is especially the case since organizations increasingly make use of diverse teams. Members of a team have shared goals and have to work together professionally. Furthermore, they need a positive climate to successfully work together. Helping, work-related or not, increases the success factor of the team as a whole. So, helping does not only have personal consequences, but it concerns the whole team and thereby the whole organization. Helping and sharing resources is crucial for the success of teams, otherwise working in teams is practically useless. Despite the necessity of helping in teams, I expect that diversity negatively influences this. Therefore, my first hypothesis is:

Hypothesis 1: there is a negative effect of diversity on helping behavior in teams. The moderating effect of perspective-taking. Despite the rather consistent view that diversity has negative effects on helping, diversity itself is a potentially important and inevitable part of modern organizations. Moreover, helping has been consistently found to have a positive effect on the organizational climate and crucial organizational

outcomes (Ellemers et al., 1998; Mackenzie et al., 1991; Mossholder et al., 2011; Rink & Ellemers, 2007a). Thus, the question can be posed: under what conditions are people in diverse teams more likely to help each other? People who see themselves as being more similar to their team members, might assume that they share other characteristics such as experiences and certain knowledge (Wittenbaum, Hillingshead, & Botero, 2004, in: Harrison & Klein, 2007), and therefore, might tend to interact more with these similar team members.

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premise for empathy is the perception of attachment for the person in need. Empathy and perspective-taking are closely related. In fact, researchers tend to use empathy and perspective-taking alongside each other, treating them as two dimensions of the same concept – an affective and a cognitive dimension, see for example Cohen (2010) – or as one being a part of the other – Long (1990) stated that perspective-taking was the cognitive dimension of empathy.

A stream of organizational research suggests that individuals‟ perceptions of their social environment are more powerful forces of influence on behavior than is the actual environment itself (Harrison & Klein, 2007). Therefore, it seems as though not the actual diversity, but rather the perception of diversity in teams might have a negative effect on helping behavior. Thus, it might be that factors that increase a person‟s likelihood of seeing similarities, rather than differences between themselves and those in their

environment, will increase the likelihood that individuals will help within a diverse team. Therefore, I propose that high perspective-taking is one condition under which people are more likely to help each other (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) – even when in a diverse team.

I argue that when a person actively participates in perspective-taking, he or she adopts a view that mimics the one of the respective other and therefore, the other becomes more similar to the perceiver him- or herself. More specifically, active role-taking causes another person‟s thoughts and feelings to become more self-like. Perspective-taking has shown to have many positive effects on pro-social behavior, among others: social competence and self-esteem (Davis, 1983), altruism (Batson, 1991; 1998) and greater assistance to the target (Batson, 1991). Also, helping a needy target has been consistently found to be stimulated by perspective-taking (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Bilewicz, 2009).

Mead (1934) and Piaget (1932) (both in: Davis et al., 1996) theorized that the ability to take another‟s perspective has positive effects on many components of human social capital. For instance, taking the perspective of others increases appreciated interpersonal relations by channeling individuals‟ usual self-centeredness, adjusting individuals‟ behaviors to expectations of others, developing moral reasoning, and

increasing altruism (Davis et al., 1996). There is also evidence that taking the perspective of out-group members into account decreases stereotyping (Bilewicz, 2009). With

stereotyping, homophilious behavior is based on the categories in which people place certain others – might this be rightly done or not. In addition, research participants who were asked to engage in role-taking were likely to experience two affective states: feelings of sympathy and compassion for the person in need and feelings of personal unease and distress (e.g., Batson et al., 1989; Davis, 1983; Betancourt, 1990; Schaller & Cialdini, 1988; all in: Davis et al., 1996).

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a problem than others. The same goes for perspective-taking. People‟s own natural tendency to take the perspective of others can be a fruitful predominant of helping others in need. Therefore, the perspective-taking manipulation may not be necessary for doing research on the effect of perspective-taking on helping behavior.

When a person sees himself or herself as less different because he or she adopts the perspective of the other, the tendency to disregard dissimilar others or to treat them differently may decrease because they appear less different. I therefore propose that individuals‟ perspective taking will moderate the relationship between diversity and helping, such that the negative effects of diversity will be ameliorated when perspective-taking is high. Thus, I propose:

Hypothesis 2: Perspective taking will moderate the relationship between diversity and team-level helping, with the negative effect of diversity being reduced when people have a greater tendency to take the perspective of others.

The conceptual model below (Figure 1) illustrates my hypotheses:

Figure 1. Conceptual model

3. METHOD

3.1 Participants and design

The data were collected from two classes of students at the University of Groningen. One of the classes contained bachelor students of business administration, the other class contained third-year and pre-masters students in an international business program. Both classes followed the same course. Three-hundred and seven respondents (56% female; Mage = 21.55, SD = 1.99) completed the study.

Participants completed this study during two separate testing periods. During the first testing period, they completed several individual difference measures online, including one on perspective-taking. They administered the materials on diversity and helping behavior in the second testing period (administered approximately two weeks later). One class received these measures during class time in paper-and-pencil form and the other completed them online outside of class.

I manipulated the diversity of their workgroup in the second questionnaire. In order to increase the realism of the task, I stated that:

Diversity in team Helping behavior

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‘We may be forming working groups for an upcoming project about organizations. These groups will be formed based on the responses that you and your classmates gave to the personality and demographic (e.g., age, race, gender) questions that you answered after the first class lecture. We are trying to get people’s feelings about the potential groups that they might be put in. Therefore, please read the scenario below and answer the following questions.’

The scenario was as follows:

‘Imagine – as best as you can – that you work in a team to complete consulting projects about organizational issues & give advice to local organizations. You work closely together and meet on a regular basis. You need each other in order to successfully complete team projects.’

To manipulate the diversity in the teams, I told respondents in the diversity condition that they were highly different from the other team members, the team members differed from each other, and mutually, they did not have a lot in common. In the similarity condition, I told participants that they were highly similar to the other team members, they themselves were very similar to each other as well, meaning that all of them had a lot in common. To emphasize these compositions, I used colored diagrams to illustrate the similarity or diversity in the group. The respondents were randomly assigned to one of the conditions. See Appendix A for samples of these diagrams.

3.2 Measures

Helping. Along with several other behaviors, I asked participants about their intention to help members of this group. There were five questions about helping behavior, three were about helping in general and two about the willingness to exchange resources. The

response scale ranged from 1=‟Not at all‟ to 7=‟Very much‟. The questions are shown in table 1. The five items as a scale showed adequate reliability, α= 0.86.

Table 1. Five questions about helping behavior Question

1 You will share your knowledge with your team members.

2 You will share any limited resources that you are given (e.g. supplies) with your team

members.

3 You will always be ready to help out your team members.

4 You will spend time on helping your team members with work-related problems. 5 You will support team members who are dealing with a high workload.

Perspective-taking. The first questionnaire contained a measure of perspective-taking. I used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) scale (Davis, 1980; Davis, 1983), which consists of thirteen questions3 such as, „I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me‟, „I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining

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how things look from their perspective‟, and „Other people’s misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal‟. The response scale ranged from 1=‟Does not describe me at all‟ to 5=‟Describes me very well‟. Five items were reverse-scored. The reliability of this scale was α= 0.67, which is considered acceptable (Nunnally, 1967).

Table 2. Perspective-taking items

Question Coding

1 I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me. +

2 Sometimes I don‟t feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems.

-

3 When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them.

+

4 Other people‟s misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal. -

5 When I see someone being treated unfairly, I sometimes don‟t feel very much pity for them.

-

6 I am often quite touched by things that I see happen. +

7 I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person. +

8 I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the “other guy‟s” point of view.

-

9 I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.

+

10 If I‟m sure I‟m right about something, I don‟t waste much time listening to

other people‟s arguments.

-

11 I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them both.

+

12 When I‟m upset at someone, I usually try to “put myself in his shoes” for a

while.

+

13 Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.

+

Control variable. I included gender of the participants as a control variable. Women are more likely to empathize with others in need than men (e.g. Eagley & Crowley, 1986, p. 540 in: Stürmer et al., 2005), suggesting that there may be differences in both helping behavior and perspective-taking between men and women. To rule out any possible effects due to gender-related behavioral differences, a gender variable is included in the analyses. While gender was asked for in both questionnaires, some respondents only filled in their gender in one of the questionnaires. Therefore, both questions were combined into one gender variable.

3.3 Data analyses

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combination of all variables in the current research. Four respondents were excluded from further analyses.4

4. RESULTS

4.1 Descriptive statistics

Table 1 presents means, standard deviations, and correlations of all the variables included in the current research. Diversity correlates negatively with helping behavior.

Perspective-taking correlates positively with helping. Diversity and perspective-taking are uncorrelated.

Table 3. Means, Standard deviations and intercorrelations of all variables

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 1. Helping 5.26 0.93 - 2. Diversity - - -0.238*** - 3. Perspective-taking 3.40 0.41 0.137* -0.094 - *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, N = 263-3065

4.2 Hypothesis testing

Control variable. To check if there was any influence of the control variable, gender, I entered gender in the first step of the regression model. Since this variable was non-significant (b = 0.06, t = 0.57, p = 0.57), I removed it from further analyses.

Main effect. In order to test Hypothesis 1, I ran a regression analysis with helping as the dependent variable and diversity as the independent variable. The result showed that diversity was negatively related to helping (b = -0.23, t = -4.56, p < 0.001), indicating that in diverse teams, the team members are less willing to help out other team members than in teams where all members are similar. This result is consistent with Hypothesis 1, so Hypothesis 1 is supported.

Moderation effect. Hypothesis 2 concerned the interaction effect of diversity and perspective-taking on helping behavior. Therefore, I computed an interaction term between these variables. In the first step, I entered diversity and perspective-taking, and in the second step, I added the interaction term in the regression analysis. Perspective-taking itself was positively and significantly related to helping (b = 0.243, t = 2.025, p < 0.05), indicating that the more someone took perspectives of others into account, the more he or she was willing to help. However, the interaction term of diversity and perspective-taking was non-significant (b = -0.014, t = -0.110, p = 0.91). Therefore, Hypothesis 2 must be rejected.

4_{Following Cohen, Cohen, West and Aiken (2003), outliers are „one or more atypical data points that do}

not fit with the rest of the data‟ (Cohen et al., 2003:390). Here, I used standardized residuals for the

combination of all variables as indication of outliers. When the standardized residuals of respondents were lower than -2 or greater than 2, the respondents were removed for further analysis.

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Table 4 gives an overview of the results of the analyses6.

Table 4. Tests of main effects and moderation

Step 1 (main effects) Step 2 (moderation effect)

Variable b b Constant 4.51*** 4.50*** Diversity -0.22*** -0.17 Perspective-taking 0.24* 0.25* Diversity*Perspective-taking - -0.01 R2 0.09 0.09 ∆R2 - 0.08 F 12,56*** 8,35*** *** p < 0.001, * p < 0.05

5. DISCUSSION

5.1 Findings

The current research was aimed at investigating the relation between helping behavior and diversity in teams. The results of the analyses show that helping is negatively related to diversity in teams, thereby supporting Hypothesis 1. This result is consistent with ample research on diversity and helping behavior (Bilewicz, 2009; Crosby et al., 1980; Sole et al., 1975; Wegner & Crano, 1975).

Second, I found that perspective-taking is positively related to helping in teams. When people are more prone to taking the perspectives of others into account, they are also more likely to help. This is consistent with research on the effect of perspective-taking on several aspects of prosocial behavior (Bilewicz, 2009; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). However, the expected moderation effect of perspective-taking on the negative relationship between diversity and helping (Hypothesis 2) was not confirmed. While perspective-taking in itself has a positive effect on helping, it did not interact with diversity to affect the relationship with helping.

5.2 Strengths and limitations

A strong point of this research is the relatively large sample size. This is beneficial for the power of the analyses. Second, by using two ways of data collection, namely both virtual

6_{Because I combined data collected from two classes, I checked for any differences between those classes.} The correlation between class and helping was 0.156 (p < 0.05), and between class and perspective-taking 0.213 (p < 0.01). A regression analysis with diversity, perspective-taking and class showed a significant effect for class (b = 0.212, t = 2.057, p < 0.05), while perspective-taking was no longer significant (in step 1

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and paper-and-pencil, any possible variance due to the method of data collection is reduced.

The manipulation of diversity itself may be both seen as a strong and a weak point of this research. The validity of the study is strengthened because the scenario that has been sketched reflects plausible real-life situations, but the context remained a

hypothetical situation. The manipulation can be evaluated as being strong, as most participants actually believed they were going to be placed in teams for an assignment. However, a few other participants had their concerns about the manipulation because they knew that group assignments were no part of the lecture they were involved in.

There are also some limitations in this research that I should mention. First, only university students participated in the research, consequently leading to homogeneity of the respondents in age and educational background. It is possible that students behave differently than other people. This homogeneity in age and educational background is also reflected in the scenario sketched in the questionnaire, thereby reducing the possible characteristics team members can differ in. Especially age – a surface-level characteristic – may in other situations significantly influence the diversity-helping relationship. Thus, caution must be exercised when generalizing these results to other samples.

Second, the diversity manipulation was dichotomous. In real life, however, diversity exists in several forms, and thus might be better conceived of as a range than a dichotomy. Lau and Murnighan (1998; 2005) theorized that the accumulation of different attributes leads to stronger faultlines between people. A faultline divides group members into distinct groups according to one or more attributes. For example, a gender faultline separates male and female team members into two distinct groups. If attributes show a high degree of collinearity, faultlines become stronger. So when a group consists of Dutch female 20-year-olds and German male 40-year-olds, there is a strong faultline based on nationality, gender, and age. In this way, faultlines mirror the heterogeneity in a group (Molleman & Slomp, 2006).

Depending on how many attributes are visible, recognized, focused on or taken into account, diversity is also a personal concept instead of an objective fact. This point was partly captured by not specifying the type of diversity but instead stating diversity as a general concept. The disadvantage of providing respondents with this general concept is that these results do not indicate which types of diversity influence helping behavior. Surface-level and deep-level differences (Harrison et al., 1998; Harrison et al., 2002; Jackson et al., 1995; Tyran & Gibson, 2008) may have various or even opposite effects on helping. Furthermore, task-related diversity might be detrimental for interpersonal relationships (Rink & Ellemers, 2007b), while non-task-related diversity in teams might relate differently to interpersonal behavior. This research does not give decisive answers as to whether distinct aspects of diversity relate differently to helping.

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(Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000) to exert its influence. However, there is reason to suggest that outcome dependency has a significant overlap with the effects of perspective-taking. In this research, I did not control for outcome dependency. It is possible that outcome dependency might decrease the effect of perspective-taking on helping in the interdependent team composition as used in the questionnaire.

5.3 Future Directions

Given the above limitations of this research, some directions for future research can be outlined. First, generalizability of the results may be increased by conducting a similar study among non-university students. For example, research can be done in an

organizational team context. This relates to another suggestion for future research, namely using real-life situations in the form of a field study or a lab study as opposed to scenario-sketching. A main question for future research is how helping is influenced in actual teams. Taking objective measures into account in a field study may benefit the generalization of the results to real-life situations. Lab studies have their advantage over field studies in the way that groups can be composed based on personal attributes, thereby maximizing or at least manipulating the strength of diversity in the teams. However, their results are less generalizable. Still, both field and lab studies have their advantages over scenario-sketching by being more realistic.

Third, a more realistic approach may not only be beneficial to the generalization of research results on diversity, but also on helping. The observation of actual helping behavior may count as an addition to the present study, for there may be a rather large difference between helping intention (as researched in this study) and helping as actual behavior in real life situations. Helping behavior may then be observed by the researchers instead of self-reported by participants. There are various kinds of helping behavior that may be observed, such as assisting or supporting others, and also sharing knowledge or limited resources.

Furthermore, diversity may be treated differently than in the current research. As the faultline theory (Lau & Murnighan, 1998; Lau & Murnighan, 2005) suggests, the degree of collinearity of characteristics may influence the effects of diversity. Treating diversity as a range rather than a dichotomy, the effects of „more or less diversity‟ may be captured. Not only the extent or degree of diversity may be taken into account in future research. Different types of diversity – such as surface-level versus deep-level or task-related versus non-task-task-related characteristics – might relate differently to interpersonal behavior such as helping. These differences may be intercepted by specifying which characteristics are used as the basis of diversity, or at least by keeping track of which traits are being used as comparison tools by the respondents.

Additionally, because teams in organizations not only deal with personal

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Finally, outcome dependency might be manipulated in future research. This manipulation may affect the negative relation between diversity and helping in a team due to a kind of oppression-effect: when the outcomes of team-based work reaches a critical importance, it may surmount the salience of interpersonal differences that otherwise would lead to negative effects on interpersonal behavior.

5.4 Theoretical and Practical Implications

Regardless of the diversity in a team, people who take the perspectives of others into account tend to help team members more than do people who do not take others‟

perspectives into account. While the negative effects of diversity on helping behavior do not disappear, this effect on itself is rather interesting. In a research on prosocial emotions and helping behavior, Stürmer and colleagues (2005) found evidence for a positive relationship between empathy and giving practical help to someone in need. In a second study, however, the authors found that empathy only predicted helping intentions when the helpee was an in-group member (thus similar to the helper) but not when the helpee was an out-group member. These findings contradict the current research. Here, the helper was more willing to help out when perspective-taking was high than when it was low, regardless of the similarity of helper and helpee.

Despite its limitations, this study may have important practical implications for how to favorably deal with diversity in work groups. Perspective-taking can be used by organizations in several ways to increase helping behavior in diverse teams. First, because people who are low on perspective-taking are discriminate in their helping intentions towards others, it is not favorable to have them in a team. Perspective-taking measures can be used as a selection tool for composing teams consisting of employees who are already part of the organization. Even when diversity in the team is an important factor, an organization may select those employees who are higher on perspective-taking than others, all else being similar. The perspective-taking scale used in this research – the IRI scale (Davis, 1980) – may be an appropriate and valid tool for this cause. These measurements as selection tools can also be used in hiring from outside the organization.

Second, perspective-taking might be actively promoted or activated by

interventions aimed at perspective-taking. The organization might help team members to become more active in perspective-taking. When perspective-taking was manipulated in research (e.g. Bilewicz, 2009; Davis et al. 1996; Oswald, 1996; Oswald, 2002), the respondents were given specific information about a possible personal situation. They were asked either to imagine they were in that given position and to respond accordingly, or to focus on thoughts and feelings of the person in the given situation. An organization might use these active role-taking interventions to increase perspective-taking in other situations as well.

5.5 Conclusion

Concluding, the fruitful effect of perspective-taking on helping behavior in teams, regardless of compositional diversity, gives thought to the possible influences

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Although this research has not found evidence that perspective-taking moderates the negative effect of diversity on helping behavior, the possibilities of active intervention on perspective-taking is a promising way to increase prosocial behavior in teams, may they be diverse or not. As the use of teams in organizations still expands, any way to influence a positive team climate is beneficial for the overall team – and organizational –

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team position

Figure 1: High diversity

Figure 3: High power, high diversity

Figure 5: High power, low diversity

Figure 2: Low diversity

Figure 4: Low power, high diversity

DIVERSITY IN TEAMS, INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVE TAKING, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON HELPING WITHIN THE TEAM