Convergence of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes across group meetings

Recent research has addressed the extent to which group communication exhibits intrapersonal and interpersonal characteristics. The most defensible and reasonable view appears to be that group interaction exhibits characteristics that fall somewhere in between, with group interaction revealing evidence of both individual- and group-level processes. Latent group and multilevel approaches were utilized to examine the use of functional communication in product design teams, across a series of tasks. The findings provided additional evidence for this middle road, or convergence approach, in that group members’ roles, as well as the function of discussion contributions, significantly varied across time, and at both levels of analysis.