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Articles

Communication and coordination across event phases: A multi-team system emergency response

This paper explores how multi-agency response teams communicate and coordinate in different phases of a simulated terrorist incident. Procedural guidelines state that responders should coordinate their response to a major emergency across two phases: ‘response’ (when the incident is ongoing) and ‘recovery’ (when the threat has subsided, but the legacy of the incident is ongoing). However, no research has examined whether these phases map to the behaviours of responders in situ. To address this, we used measures of communication and coordination to examine how behaviours evolved during a simulated terrorist incident in the United Kingdom. We grounded our approach within the theoretical literature on multi-team systems. It was found that the current response/recovery classification does not fit the nuanced context of an emergency. Instead, a three-phase structure of ‘response/resolve/recovery’ is more reflective of behaviour. It was also found that coordination between agencies improved when communication networks became less centralized. This suggests that collaborative working in multi-team systems may be improved by adopting decentralized communication networks.

(From the journal abstract)


Brown, O., Power, N. and Conchie, S.M. (2021), Communication and coordination across event phases: A multi-team system emergency response. J Occup Organ Psychol.

Authors: Olivia Brown, Nicola Power, Stacey Conchie
https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12349
Immersive simulations with extreme teams

Extreme teams (ETs) work in challenging, high pressured contexts, where poor performance can have severe consequences. These teams must coordinate their skill sets, align their goals, and develop shared awareness, all under stressful conditions. How best to research these teams poses unique challenges as researchers seek to provide applied recommendations while conducting rigorous research to test how teamwork models work in practice. In this article, we identify immersive simulations as one solution to this, outlining their advantages over existing methodologies and suggesting how researchers can best make use of recent advances in technology and analytical techniques when designing simulation studies. We conclude that immersive simulations are key to ensuring ecological validity and empirically reliable research with ETs.

(From the journal abstract)


Brown, O., Power, N., & Conchie, S. M. (2020). Immersive simulations with extreme teams. Organizational Psychology Review, 10(3–4), 115–135.

Authors: Olivia Brown, Nicola Power, Stacey Conchie
https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386620926037
Behavioral consistency in the digital age

Efforts to infer personality from digital footprints have focused on behavioral stability at the trait level without considering situational dependency. We repeat Shoda, Mischel, and Wright’s (1994) classic study of intraindividual consistency with data on 28,692 days of smartphone usage by 780 people. Using per app measures of ‘pickup’ frequency and usage duration, we found that profiles of daily smartphone usage were significantly more consistent when taken from the same user than from different users (d > 1.46). Random forest models trained on 6 days of behavior identified each of the 780 users in test data with 35.8% / 38.5% (pickup / duration) accuracy. This increased to 73.5% / 75.3% when success was taken as the user appearing in the top 10 predictions (i.e., top 1%). Thus, situation-dependent stability in behavior is present in our digital lives and its uniqueness provides both opportunities and risks to privacy.

(From the journal abstract)


Shaw, H., Taylor, P., Ellis, D. A., & Conchie, S. (2021). Behavioral consistency in the digital age [Preprint]. PsyArXiv.

Authors: Heather Shaw, Paul Taylor, David Ellis, Stacey Conchie
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/r5wtn
Language Style Matching : A Comprehensive List of Articles and Tools

Language style matching (LSM) is a technique in behavioural analytics which assess the stylistic similarities in language use across groups and individuals. The procedure targets the similarity of functions words, analysing the way people use language rather than the content. Function words consist of pronouns, articles, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs e.t.c. which have a syntactical role in language. To assess the similarity of language use between interlocutors, the percentage of function words used can be compared within and across conversations using a metric designed to calculate the matching of specific word categories and overall LSM (Ireland et al., 2011) . It is also possible to assess language style matching to a group’s aggregate style. High language style matching is an indicator of interpersonal and group mimicry and has been shown to influence psychological factors and behavioural outcomes. These are listed in this preprint and categorised by topic. The list aims to be a complete summary of the existing literature to date exploring LSM. Therefore, please email the author if there are any projects and tools not listed below.


Shaw, H., Taylor, P., Conchie, S., & David Alexander Ellis, D. (2019, Mar 6). Language Style Matching: A Comprehensive List of Articles and Tools

Authors: Heather Shaw, Paul Taylor, Stacey Conchie, David Ellis
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yz4br

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