Effect of Group Composition on Group Process: Homogeneity vs Heterogeneity on Task and People Dimensions
An experimental study was designed to test whether task composition, people composition, or their interaction affected various aspects of group process, e.g., satisfaction, influence, conflict, communication, etc. Each composition variable was varied according to homogeneous or heterogeneous characteristics resulting in a 2 × 2 design. 18 groups of 5 persons each were distributed in the 4 cells and responded to a decision-making task. The results indicate a significant interaction effect between task and people composition, suggesting that the effect of each on group process is dependent on the state of the other, although task composition had the dominant impact in this study.