Team Member Personality, Performance and Stress in a RoboFlag Synthetic Task Environment

Effective teamwork is an important component in the control of multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). Personality traits of individual team members may be a factor influencing overall team performance and individual levels of perceived workload and stress. In this study, a multiple UV environment was simulated by use of the RoboFlag game. Participants played the RoboFlag game individually or in two-person teams and were presented with this sequence of task-phases: RoboFlag alone, RoboFlag with a secondary task, RoboFlag alone. It was predicted that the RoboFlag performance would relate to ‘Big Five’ personality traits. It was also expected that Neuroticism would relate to higher workload and stress, especially in more demanding task conditions. The results suggested that the influence of personality is generally limited, but may sometimes be important. Specifically, high Neuroticism individuals showed higher workload and stress in a team player condition, which may impose social as well as task demands.

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