Navigating affect in group decision-making: Understanding the interplay of group affective tone and the within-group environment

Despite consensus on the existence of group affective tone and its potential to influence group functioning and outcomes, evidence concerning its impact on group decision-making remains ambiguous. While some findings advocate that group negative affective tone (GNAT) is more conducive to higher decision-making quality, others point to group positive affective tone (GPAT) as more beneficial. Our study clarifies these relationships by extending two individual-level theories to the group context, proposing that both GNAT and GPAT can be advantageous for decision-making, albeit through enhancing different aspects of group discussion. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the nature of the within-group environment—whether competitive or cooperative—affects these dynamics. Through an experimental study involving live discussions among 97 groups of 291 students and a field study with 130 workgroups of 392 full-time employees, we documented that group competitive environments amplified GNAT's influence on the depth of group discussions, while group cooperative environments amplified GPAT's effect on the breadth of these discussions. Both dynamics in turn influenced the quality of group decision-making. These findings offer insights into the interplay between group affective tone and group environments in shaping decision-making processes. We discuss the implications and avenues for future research at the end.