MAKING GOOD DECISIONS: THE ROLE OF TEAM PERSONALITY DIVERSITY AND GROUP POLARIZATION Watson, Jeremy Beau Making high quality decisions is central to organizations in order to remain competitive, increase productivity, quality, and/or remain responsive to customers. Most often, teams are responsible for making vital decisions and decision accuracy is key to obtaining desired outcomes. This study examined the role of team personality diversity as it pertains to decision quality. Additionally, a common phenomenon known as group polarization was studied with regard to cooperative and competitive attitudes as a potential important process. Using several decision scenarios and the Lost on the Moon task, 279 individuals in teams of three (n = 93 teams) participated in a laboratory study to investigate the relationship between team personality diversity, group polarization of cooperative/competitive attitudes, and decision quality. Results indicated that team agreeableness diversity was positively related to group polarization, and team openness diversity was negatively related to decision quality. Previous research, implications, and limitations to this study are also discussed. PH.D in Psychology, May 2014 Landis, Ronald S. 2014 2014-05 Dissertation application/pdf islandora:7215 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/3349 PSYCH / Institute of Psychology Illinois Institute of Technology en In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/ Restricted Access