Emotion Display Norms in Virtual Teams

Abstract

Norms for displaying emotions influence how individuals express their feelings and interpret the emotional expressions of others. Prior research found cross-cultural variation of emotion display norms, but primarily examined face-to-face communication and culturally homogeneous contexts. This study examined perceived emotion display norms for virtual teams, using a sample of 167 MBA students from five countries, who rated the appropriateness of virtually displaying positive and negative emotions for culturally homogeneous and multicultural teams. Results indicate that display norms call for greater expression of positive emotions and suppression of negative emotions in multicultural versus culturally homogeneous teams; national identity influences norms for culturally homogeneous but not multicultural teams, and the strength of norms in multicultural teams is higher among participants with high versus low global identity.