For decades, scholars have looked into conflict episodes to explain group performance. In most of the recent empirical research, the findings on the effects of conflict on group performance depend upon the conflict dimensions under analysis, generally associating emotional conflict with decreased group performance, and task conflict with increased group performance. However, the mechanisms through which conflict dimensions differentially affect group performance remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine how each type of conflict emerges in groups and how these conflict variables affect group performance and outcomes. To this end, a quasi-experiment was run in which 500 undergraduate students of a regional university of Venezuela assembled some beaded figures and then reported on their task. The results indicated that teammate personalities influence the extent to which the group experiences conflict episodes. Furthermore, the results indicated that unlike task conflict, emotional conflict hinders behaviors such as contextual performance that contribute to group effectiveness and promotes the emergence of negative affective tone of the group. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed
