CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

120 BEERSMA, CONLON, AND HOLLENBECK
shaping of social value orientations in the direction of a prosocial motivation
as age increases.
Other determinants of social motives are the individual group members’
personalities in a broader sense. The leading approach to dispositional
differences between individuals is the five factor model (FFM), a
robust taxonomy of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The five factors
are extroversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness,
and openness to experience. The trait of agreeableness is intrinsically
interpersonal in nature (McCrae & Costa, 1989). Group members high
on agreeableness tend to be friendly, trusting, warm, tolerant, and eager
to help others and to be helped in return (Costa & McCrae). This trait
seems clearly related to team members’ social motivation; it may be
expected that groups with a high level of agreeableness are more prosocially
motivated than groups with a lower level of this trait (cf. Barrick,
Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998; Moynihan & Peterson, 2001). Indeed,
Wagner (1995) found that highly agreeable individuals were more likely
to be rated as cooperative group members by their peers. Likewise, Graziano,
Jensen-Campbell, and Hair (1996) found that, even in tasks that
were designed to elicit conflict, agreeable individuals perceived less
conflict and saw their opponents as more positive than those lower in
agreeableness, indicating that they approached the conflict in a more
prosocial manner.
Situational Variables
Apart from dispositional differences, situational variables play an
important role in determining the social motives of team members. The
social motive one adopts may in large part depend on one’s ethnic or
organizational culture. Following Hofstede (1980) and Triandis (1989),
collectivistic and individualistic cultures are often distinguished. In
the predominantly used measure of individualism–collectivism, the
IndCol, a horizontal and vertical dimension is distinguished (Singelis,
1994). In horizontal collectivism, people have an interdependent selfconstrual
(e.g., a low need for distinction and uniqueness), and status
differences are not very important. In vertical collectivism, the need for
distinction and uniqueness are also low, but relative status is valued
and important. In horizontal individualism, people want to be unique
and distinct but they are not especially interested in having a higher
status. Finally, in vertical individualism, people want to be distinguished
and have a higher status than the others (Triandis & Gelfand,
1998). Probst, Carnevale, and Triandis (1999) found that scores on the
“vertical individualism” scale of the IndCol, which contains items such
as “winning is everything,” are correlated to a proself motive. As may
be expected, they also found positive correlations between the collectivism
subscales and a prosocial motive. Although a criticism of the