Getting to know you: a multimodal investigation of team behavior and resilience to stress

Team cohesion has been suggested to be a critical factor in emotional resilience following periods of stress. Team cohesion may depend on several factors including emotional state, communication among team members and even psychophysiological response. The present study sought to employ several multimodal techniques designed to investigate team behavior as a means of understanding resilience to stress. We recruited 40 subjects to perform a cooperative-task in gender-matched, two-person teams. They were responsible for working together to meet a common goal, which was to successfully disarm a simulated bomb. This high-workload task requires successful cooperation and communication among members. We assessed several behaviors that relate to facial expression, word choice and physiological responses (i.e., heart rate variability) within this scenario. A manipulation of an â€oeice breaker” condition was used to induce a level of comfort or familiarity within the team prior to the task. We found that individuals in the â€oeice breaker” condition exhibited better resilience to subjective stress following the task. These individuals also exhibited more insight and cognitive speech, more positive facial expressions and were also able to better regulate their emotional expression during the task, compared to the control.