Speaking Similarly: Team Personality Composition and Acoustic-Prosodic Entrainment

Abstract

This study introduces the concept of acoustic-prosodic entrainment (ways people speak similarly). We review prior research on entrainment theory and methods from computational linguistics, and then apply this concept to team research by examining the relationship between team personality composition and subsequent entrainment in an exploratory case study. With 62 teams playing a cooperative board game, team average Agreeableness and team Agreeableness diversity positively, and Openness to Experience diversity negatively, preceded different kinds of entrainment. This study suggests entrainment is not a singular construct. Small group researchers could leverage technological, methodological, and conceptual advances in computational linguistics to study emergent team processes.