Research on gender differences in group performance suggests that males excel at brainstorming while females excel at human relations and integration. To investigate the relations among gender, interaction style, and task performance, 264 college students (130 female, 134 male) worked in three person same sex groups on a production task which required the generation of ideas, or on a discussion task which required group members to reach consensus concerning their evaluation of an issue. After the task, subjects completed a questionnaire assessing the quality of the group interaction. An analysis of the results showed that males and subjects assigned to production tasks reported spending more time generating solutions and less concern for harmonious group relations than females and participants working on discussion tasks. Interaction style mediated the relations between gender and group performance in that male groups generated more solutions to production tasks and lower quality solutions to discussion tasks than female groups. No gender differences were obtained in production performance when subjects worked individually and only the creativity of the discussion problems was affected by gender, such that males working individually generated more creative solutions than females. (Author/BL)