This doctoral dissertation research seeks to advance our understanding of team failure by integrating and extending the literature on how, when, and why individual negative members - who we call "bad apples" - can undermine effective team functioning. Psychological research suggests that people feel negative events more intensely than positive ones, discuss negative events more frequently with others, ruminate over negative events for longer periods of time, and give negative events more weight in assessing the meaning of social interactions. Based on this reasoning, I predict that persistent and consistent negative behaviors - including interpersonal deviance, negative affectivity, and withholding effort from the group - are likely to have a disproportionately large impact on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of teammates, and that they may lead to a downward spiral of poor performance and interpersonal acrimony.
In this research I intend to detail 1) the prevalence and impact of different types of negative behavior in teams, 2) the mechanisms by which negative members influence the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of teammates, and finally, 3) the conditions under which groups are more and less able to deal with persistent and consistent negative behavior. In terms of broader implications, to the extent we can identify group members that deleteriously influence others, interventions can be put in place to change these individual's behavior or decrease their prevalence in important positions of authority.
To test these assertions, several empirical tests are planned. This includes 1) a laboratory investigation using confederates to simulate bad apple conditions, 2) a laboratory based, video vignette methodology that tests a proposed structural equation model, and 3) a questionnaire administered to workers in the field. These three studies will provide a foundation upon which to build a base of knowledge about negative group members and their effects. In total, the inclusion of the bad apple phenomenon in future theory can help to explain, predict and improve performance of dysfunctional groups.
