Emociones y Trabajo Emocional Flashcards
(13 cards)
Emtions, mood and affect
In our analysis, we’ll need three terms that are closely intertwined: affect, emo-tions, and moods. Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings, including both emotions and moods.1 Emotions are intense feelings directed at someone or something.2 Moods are less intense feelings than emotions and often arise without a specific event acting as a stimulus.3 Exhibit 4-1 shows the relationships among affect, emotions, and moods.First, as the exhibit shows, affect is a broad term that encompasses emotions and moods. Second, there are differences between emotions and moods. Emo-tions are more likely to be caused by a specific event and are more fleeting than moods. Also, some researchers speculate that emotions may be more action-oriented—they may lead us to some immediate action—while moods may be more cognitive, meaning they may cause us to think or brood for a while.4Affect, emotions, and moods are separable in theory; in practice the dis-tinction isn’t always defined. When we review the OB topics on emotions and moods, you may see more information about emotions in one area and moods in another. This is simply the state of the research. Let’s start with a review of the basic emotions
Moral emotions
We may tend to think our internal emotions are innate. For instance, if someone jumped out at you from behind a door, wouldn’t you feel surprised? Maybe you would, but you may also feel any of the other five universal emotions— anger fear, sadness, happiness, or disgust—depending on the circumstance. Our expe-riences of emotions are closely tied to our interpretations of events.Researchers have been studying what are called moral emotions; that is, emo-tions that have moral implications because of our instant judgment of the situ-ation that evokes them. Examples of moral emotions include sympathy for the suffering of others, guilt about our own immoral behavior, anger about injustice done to others, and contempt for those who behave unethically.Another example is the disgust we feel about violations of moral norms, called moral disgust. Moral disgust is different from disgust. Say you stepped in cow dung by mistake—you might feel disgusted by it, but not moral disgust—you probably wouldn’t make a moral judgment. In contrast, say you watched a video of a police officer making a sexist or racist slur. You might feel disgusted in a dif-ferent way because it offends your sense of right and wrong. In fact, you might feel a variety of emotions based on your moral judgment of the situation.10Interestingly, research indicates that our responses to moral emotions dif-fer from our responses to other emotions.11 When we feel moral anger, for instance, we may be more likely to confront the situation that causes it than when we just feel angry. However, we cannot assume our emotional reactions to events on a moral level will be the same as someone else’s. Moral emotions are learned, usually in childhood,12 and thus they are not universal like innate emo-tions. Because morality is a construct that differs between cultures, so do moral emotions. Therefore, we need to be aware of the moral aspects of situations that trigger our emotions and make certain we understand the context before we act, especially in the workplace. You can think about this research in your own life to see how moral emo-tions operate. Consider the earthquakes that struck China in 2014. When you heard about the disaster, did you feel emotionally upset about the suffering of others, or did you make more of a rational calculation about their unfortunate situation? Consider a time when you have done something that hurt someone else. Did you feel angry or upset with yourself? Or think about a time when you have seen someone else treated unfairly. Did you feel contempt for the person acting unfairly, or did you engage in a cool, rational calculation of the justice of the situation? Most people who think about these situations have some sense of an emotional stirring that might prompt them to engage in ethical actions like donating money to help others, apologizing and attempting to make amends, or intervening on behalf of those who have been mistreated. In sum, we can conclude that people who are behaving ethically are at least partially making decisions based on their emotions and feelings.Emotions can be fleeting, but moods can endure . . . for quite a while. In order to understand the impact of emotions and moods in organizations, we next classify the many distinct emotions into broader mood categories
The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affect
As a first step toward studying the effect of moods and emotions in the work-place, we will classify emotions into two categories: positive and negative. Positive emotions—such as joy and gratitude—express a favorable evaluation or feeling. Negative emotions—such as anger and guilt—express the oppo-site. Keep in mind that emotions can’t be neutral. Being neutral is being nonemotional.13When we group emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood states because we are now looking at them more generally instead of iso-lating one particular emotion. In Exhibit 4-2, excited is a pure marker of high positive affect, while boredom is a pure marker of low positive affect. Nervous is a pure marker of high negative affect; relaxed is a pure marker of low nega-tive affect. Finally, some emotions—such as contentment and sadness—are in between. You’ll notice this model does not include all emotions. Some, such as surprise, don’t fit well because they’re not as clearly positive or negative.So, we can think of positive affect as a mood dimension consisting of posi-tive emotions such as excitement, enthusiasm, and elation at the high end (high positive affect). Negative affect is a mood dimension consisting of nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end (high negative affect). While we rarely expe-rience both positive and negative affect at the same time, over time people do differ in how much they experience each. Some people (we might call them emotional or intense) may experience quite a bit of high positive and high negative affect over, say, a week’s time. Others (we might call them unemotional or phlegmatic) experience little of either. And still others may experience one much more predominately than the other
Experiencing Moods and Emotions
As if it weren’t complex enough to consider the many distinct emotions and moods a person might identify, the reality is that we all experience moods and emotions differently. For most people, positive moods are somewhat more com-mon than negative moods. Indeed, research finds a positivity offset, meaning that at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on), most individuals experience a mildly positive mood.14 This appears to be true for employees in a wide range of job settings. For example, one study of customer-service represen-tatives in a British call center revealed that people reported experiencing posi-tive moods 58 percent of the time despite the stressful environment.15 Another research finding is that negative emotions lead to negative moods. Perhaps this happens because people think about events that created strong negative emo-tions five times as long as they do about events that created strong positive ones.16Does the degree to which people experience positive and negative emotions vary across cultures? Yes (see the OB Poll). The reason is not that people of different cultures are inherently different: People in most cultures appear to experience certain positive and negative emotions, and people interpret them in much the same way worldwide. We all view negative emotions such as hate, terror, and rage as dangerous and destructive, and we desire positive emo-tions such as joy, love, and happiness. However, an individual’s experience of emotions appears to be culturally shaped. Some cultures value certain emotions
The Function of Emotions
In some ways, emotions are a mystery. What function do they serve? As we discussed, organizational behaviorists have been finding that emotions can be critical to an effectively functioning workplace. For example, happy employees demonstrate higher performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), fewer CWBs, and less turnover, particularly when they feel supported by their organizations in their effort to do well in their jobs.21 Gratefulness and awe have been shown to positively predict OCB,22 which in turn increases trust and emotional expressions of concern.23 Let’s discuss two critical areas— rationality and ethicality—in which emotions can enhance performance.Do Emotions Make Us Irrational? How often have you heard someone say, “Oh, you’re just being emotional”? You might have been offended. Observations like this suggest that rationality and emotion are in conflict, and by exhibiting emo-tion, you are acting irrationally. The perceived association between the two is so strong that some researchers argue displaying emotions such as sadness to the point of crying is so toxic to a career that we should leave the room rather than allow others to witness it.24 This perspective suggests the demonstration or even experience of emotions can make us seem weak, brittle, or irrational. However, this is wrong. Our emotions actually make our thinking more rational. Why? Because our emotions provide important information about how we under-stand the world around us and they help guide our behaviors. For instance, individuals in a negative mood may be better able to discern truthful from accu-rate information than are people in a happy mood
Sources of Emotions and Moods
- PersonalityMoods and emotions have a personality trait component, meaning that some people have built-in tendencies to experience certain moods and emotions more frequently than others do. People also experience the same emotions with different intensities; the degree to which they experience them is called their affect intensity.31 Affectively intense people experience both positive and negative emotions more deeply: when they’re sad, they’re really sad, and when they’re happy, they’re really happy
- Time of DayMoods vary by the time of day. However, research suggests most of us actually follow the same pattern. Levels of positive affect tend to peak in the late morn-ing (10 a.m.–noon) and then remain at that level until early evening (around 7 p.m.).32 Starting about 12 hours after waking, positive affect begins to drop until midnight, and then, for those who remain awake, the drop accelerates until positive mood picks up again after sunrise.33As for negative affect, most research suggests it fluctuates less than positive affect,34 but the general trend is for it to increase over the course of a day, so that it is lowest early in the morning and highest late in the evening
- Day of the WeekAre people in their best moods on the weekends? In most cultures that is true—for example, U.S. adults tend to experience their highest positive affect on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and their lowest on Monday.38 As shown in Exhibit4-4, again based on the study of Twitter messages, that tends to be true in several other cultures as well. For Germans and Chinese, positive affect is highest from Friday to Sunday and lowest on Monday. This isn’t the case in all cultures, however. As the exhibit shows, in Japan positive affect is higher on Monday than on either Friday or Saturday.As for negative affect, Monday is the highest negative-affect day across most cultures. However, in some countries, negative affect is lower on Friday and Saturday than on Sunday. It may be that while Sunday is enjoyable as a day off (and thus we have higher positive affect), we also get a bit stressed about the week ahead (which is why negative affect is higher
- WeatherWhen do you think you would be in a better mood—when it’s 70 degrees and sunny, or on a gloomy, cold, rainy day? Many people believe their mood is tied to the weather. However, a fairly large and detailed body of evidence suggests weather has little effect on mood, at least for most people.39 One expert concluded, “Contrary to the prevailing cultural view, these data indicate that people do not report a better mood on bright and sunny days (or, conversely, a worse mood on dark and rainy days).”40 Illusory correlation, which occurs when we associate two events that
- StressAs you might imagine, stressful events at work (a nasty e-mail, impending deadline, loss of a big sale, reprimand from the boss, etc.) negatively affect moods. The effects of stress also build over time. As the authors of one study note, “Aconstant diet of even low-level stressful events has the potential to cause workers to experience gradually increasing levels of strain over time.”42 Mounting levels of stress can worsen our moods, as we experience more negative emotions. Although sometimes we thrive on it, most of us find stress usually takes a toll on our mood. In fact, when situations are overly emotion-ally charged and stressful, we have a natural response to disengage, to literally look away.43
- Social ActivitiesDo you tend to be happiest when out with friends? For most people, social activities increase a positive mood and have little effect on a negative mood. But do people in positive moods seek out social interactions, or do social interactions cause people to be in good moods? It seems both are true,44 though the type of social activity does matter. Activities that are physical (skiing or hiking with friends), informal (going to a party), or epicurean (eating with others) are more strongly associated with increases in positive mood than events that are formal (attending a meeting) or sedentary (watching TV with friends).45
- SleepU.S. adults report sleeping less than adults a generation ago.46 According to researchers and public health specialists, a large portion of the U.S. workforce suffers from sleep deprivation: 41 million workers sleep less than 6 hours per night. Sleep quality affects moods and decision making, and increased fatigue puts workers at risk of disease, injury, and depression.47 Poor or reduced sleep also makes it difficult to control emotions. Even one bad night’s sleep makes us more angry and risk-prone,48 possibly because poor sleep impairs job satisfac-tion49 and makes us less able to make ethical judgments.50On the positive side, increased regular sleep enhances creativity, performance, and career success. University of California-San Diego researchers calculated that for employees who do not sleep enough, “a one-hour increase in long-run aver-age sleep increases wages by 16 percent, equivalent to more than a year of school-ing.”51 Other researchers are trying to reduce how much sleep is needed for high functioning through drug therapy, hoping to find “something better than caffeine,” said Ying-Hui Fu of the University of California-San Francisco.52
- ExerciseYou often hear people should exercise to improve their mood. Does “sweat therapy” really work? It appears so. Research consistently shows exercise enhances peoples’ positive moods.53 While not terribly strong overall, the effects are strongest for those who are depressed.
- AgeDo young people experience more extreme positive emotions (so-called youth-ful exuberance) than older people? Surprisingly, no. One study of people ages 18 to 94 revealed that negative emotions occur less as people get older. Periods of highly positive moods lasted longer for the study’s older participants, and bad moods faded more quickly
- SexMany believe women are more emotional than men. Is there any truth to this? Evidence does confirm women experience emotions more intensely, tend to “hold onto” emotions longer than men, and display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger.55 Evidence from a study of participants from 37 different countries found that men consistently reported higher levels of powerful emotions like anger, whereas women reported more powerless emotions like sadness and fear. Thus, there are some sex differences in the experience and expression of emotions.56People also tend to attribute men’s and women’s emotions in ways that might be based on stereotypes of typical emotional reactions. One study showed that when viewing pictures of faces, participants interpreted the women’s emotional expressions as being dispositional (related to personality), whereas the men’s expressions were interpreted as situational.57 For example, a picture of a sad woman led observers to believe she had an emotional personality, whereas a pic-ture of sadness in a man was more likely to be attributed to having a bad day. Another study showed that participants were quicker to detect angry expressions on male faces and happy expressions on female faces; neutral faces in men were attributed as more angry and neutral faces in women were interpreted as happy.58It might seem by now that we all—leaders, managers, and employees alike—operate as unwitting slaves to our emotions and moods. On an internal experi-ential level, this may be true. Yet we know from our workplace experiences that people aren’t expressing every brief emotion that flits through their conscious-ness. Let’s put together what we’ve learned about emotions and moods with workplace coping strategies, beginning with emotional labor
Emotional Labor
If you’ve ever had a job in retail, sales, or waited on tables in a restaurant, you know the importance of projecting a friendly demeanor and smiling. Even though there were days when you didn’t feel cheerful, you knew management expected you to be upbeat when dealing with customers, so you faked it.Every employee expends physical and mental labor by putting body and mind, respectively, into the job. But jobs also require emotional labor, an employee’s expression of organizationally desired emotions during interper-sonal transactions at work. Emotional labor is a key component of effective job. performance. We expect flight attendants to be cheerful, funeral directors to be sad, and doctors emotionally neutral. At the least, your managers expect you to be courteous, not hostile, in your interactions with coworkers.The way we experience an emotion is obviously not always the same as the way we show it. To analyze emotional labor, we divide emotions into felt or dis-played emotions.59 Felt emotions are our actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given job. They’re not innate; they’re learned, and they may or may not coincide with felt emotions. For instance, research suggests that in U.S. workplaces, it is expected that employees should typically display positive emo-tions like happiness and excitement and suppress negative emotions like fear, anger, disgust, and contempt.60Effective managers have learned to look serious when they give an employee a negative performance evaluation, and to look calm when they are berated by their bosses, because the organization expects these displays. Of course, there are no display rules for many workplace situations. Does your employer dictate what emotions you display when you are, say, heading out for lunch? Probably not. Many workplaces have explicit display rules, but usually only for interactions that matter, particularly between employees and customers. Regarding employee and customer interactions, you might expect that the more an employer dictates sales-people’s emotional displays, the higher the sales. Actually, employees under very high or very low display rules do not perform as well in sales situations as employ-ees who have moderate display rules and a high degree of discretion in their roles.61Displaying fake emotions requires us to suppress real ones. Surface acting is hiding inner feelings and emotional expressions in response to display rules. A worker who smiles at a customer even when he doesn’t feel like it is surface acting. Deep acting is trying to modify our true inner feelings based on display rules. Sur-face acting deals with displayed emotions, and deep acting deals with felt emotions.Displaying emotions we don’t really feel can be exhausting. Surface acting is associated with increased stress and decreased job satisfaction.62 Surface acting on a daily basis can also lead to emotional exhaustion at home, work-family con-flict, and insomnia.63 On the other hand, deep acting has a positive relationship with job satisfaction and job performance.64 We also experience less emotional exhaustion with deep acting. When employees have to project one emotion while feeling another, this dis-parity is called emotional dissonance. Bottled-up feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment can lead to emotional exhaustion. Long-term emotional dis-sonance is a predictor for job burnout, declines in job performance, and lower job satisfaction.65It is important to counteract the effects of emotional labor and emotional dissonance. Research in the Netherlands and Belgium indicated that while sur-face acting is stressful to employees, mindfulness—objectively and deliberately evaluating our emotional situation in the moment—was negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion and positively affected job satisfaction.66 Mindful-ness is one of several emotion regulation techniques that we will discuss later in this text. Beyond emotion regulation, employees who engage in surface dis-plays should be given a chance to relax and recharge. For example, a study that looked at how cheerleading instructors spent their breaks from teaching found those who used the time to rest and relax were more effective after their breaks than those who did chores during their breaks.67 Lastly, employees who can depersonalize or standardize their work interactions that require emotional labor may be able to successfully carry on their acting while thinking of other tasks, thus bypassing the emotional impact.68The concept of emotional labor makes intuitive and organizational sense. Affective events theory, discussed in the next section, fits a job’s emotional labor requirements into a construct with implications for work events, emotional reac-tions, job satisfaction, and job performance.
Affective Events Theory
We’ve seen that emotions and moods are an important part of our personal and work lives. But how do they influence our job performance and satisfaction? Affective events theory (AET) proposes that employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work, and this reaction influences their job per-formance and satisfaction.69 Say you just found out your company is downsizing. You might experience a variety of negative emotions, causing you to worry that you’ll lose your job. Because it is out of your hands, you feel insecure and fear-ful, and spend much of your time worrying rather than working. Needless to say, your job satisfaction will also be down.Work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions, to which employ-ees’ personalities and moods predispose them to respond with greater or lesser intensity.70 People who score low on emotional stability are more likely to react strongly to negative events, and our emotional response to a given event can change depending on mood. Finally, emotions influence a number of perfor-mance and satisfaction variables, such as OCB, organizational commitment, level of effort, intention to quit, and workplace deviance.In sum, AET offers two important messages.71 First, emotions provide valu-able insights into how workplace events influence employee performance and satisfaction. Second, employees and managers shouldn’t ignore emotions or the events that cause them, even when they appear minor, because they accumu-late. Emotional intelligence is another framework that helps us understand the impact of emotions on job performance, so we will look at that next.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to (1) perceive emotions in the self and others, (2) understand the meaning of these emotions, and (3) regulate his or her own emotions accordingly, as shown in Exhibit 4-5. People who know their own emotions and are good at reading emotional cues—for instance, knowing why they’re angry and how to express themselves without violating norms—are most likely to be effective.74Several studies suggest EI plays an important role in job performance. One study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technol-ogy found that executive MBA students who performed best on a strategic decision-making task were more likely to incorporate emotion centers of the brain into their choice process.75 One simulation study showed that students who were good at identifying and distinguishing among their own feelings were able to make more profitable investment decisions.76 For an overall per-spective, research studied 11 U.S. presidents—from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton—and evaluated them on six qualities: communication, organi-zation, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. The key quality that differentiated the successful (such as Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan) from the unsuccessful (such as Johnson, Carter, and Nixon) was emotional intelligence.77Although the field is progressing in its understanding of EI, many ques-tions have not been answered. One relates to proving what EI may predict. For example, while evidence indicates that EI has some correlation with job perfor-mance, the correlation isn’t high, and it is explained to a large degree by traits such as emotional stability. A second question is about the reliability of EI test-ing. For example, part of the reason EI has only a modest correlation with job effectiveness is that it is hard to measure—mostly it is measured with self-report inventories, which of course are often far from objective
Emotion Regulation Influences and Outcomes
As you might suspect, not everyone is equally good at regulating emotions. Individuals who are higher in the personality trait of neuroticism have more trouble doing so and often find their moods are beyond their ability to control. Individuals who have lower levels of self-esteem are also less likely to try to im-prove their sad moods, perhaps because they are less likely than others to feel they deserve to be in a good mood.80The workplace environment has an effect on an individual’s tendency to employ emotion regulation. In general, diversity in work groups increases the likelihood that you will regulate your emotions. For example, younger employees are likely to regulate their emotions when their work groups include older mem-bers.81 Racial diversity also has an effect: if diversity is low, the minority will engage in emotion regulation, perhaps to “fit in” with the majority race as much as pos-sible; if diversity is high and many different races are represented, the majority race will employ emotion regulation, perhaps to integrate themselves with the whole group.82 These findings suggest a beneficial outcome of diversity—it may cause us to regulate our emotions more consciously and effectively.While regulating your emotions might seem beneficial, research suggests there is a downside to trying to change the way you feel. Changing your emo-tions takes effort, and as we noted when discussing emotional labor, this effort can be exhausting. Sometimes attempts to change an emotion actually make the emotion stronger; for example, trying to talk yourself out of being afraid can make you focus more on what scares you, which makes you more afraid.83 From another perspective, research suggests that avoiding negative emotional experiences is less likely to lead to positive moods than does seeking out positive emotional experiences.84 For example, you’re more likely to experience a posi-tive mood if you have a pleasant conversation with a friend than if you avoid an unpleasant conversation with a hostile coworke
Emotion Regulation Techniques
Researchers of emotion regulation often study the strategies people employ to change their emotions. One technique we have discussed in this chapter is sur-face acting, or literally “putting on a face” of appropriate response to a given situation. Surface acting doesn’t change the emotions, though, so the regula-tion effect is minimal, and the result of daily surface acting leads to exhaustion and fewer OCBs.85 Perhaps due to the costs of creatively expressing what we don’t feel, individuals who vary their surface-acting response may have lower job satisfaction and higher levels of work withdrawal than those who consistently give the same responses.86Deep acting, another technique we have covered, is less psychologically costly than surface acting because the employee is actually trying to experi-ence the emotion. Emotion regulation through deep acting can have a positive impact on work outcomes. For example, a recent study in the Netherlands and Germany found that individuals in service jobs earned significantly more direct pay (tips) after they received training in deep acting.87One technique of emotion regulation is emotional suppression, or suppressing initial emotional responses to situations. This response seems to facilitate prac-tical thinking in the short term. However, it appears to be helpful only when a strongly negative event would illicit a distressed emotional reaction in a crisis situation.88 For example, a soldier in battle may suppress initial emotional dis-tress after a shooting and thus be able to make clearer decisions about how to proceed. A portfolio manager might suppress an emotional reaction to a sud-den drop in the value of a stock and therefore be able to clearly decide how to plan. Suppression used in crisis situations appears to help an individual recover from the event emotionally, while suppression used as an everyday emotion regulation technique can take a toll on mental ability, emotional ability, health, and relationships.89Thus, unless we’re truly in a crisis situation, acknowledging rather than suppressing our emotional responses to situations, and re-evaluating events after they occur, yield the best outcomes.90 Cognitive reappraisal, or reframing our outlook on an emotional situation, is one way to effectively regulate emo-tions.91 Cognitive reappraisal ability seems to be the most helpful to individu-als in situations where they cannot control the sources of stress.92 A recent study illustrates the potentially powerful effect of this technique. Israeli participants who were shown anger-inducing information about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict after they were primed to reappraise the situation showed more inclination toward conciliation and less inclination toward aggressive tactics against Palestinians than the control group, not only immediately after the study but up to 5 months later. This result suggests that cognitive reap-praisal may allow people to change their emotional responses, even when the subject matter is as highly emotionally charged as the Israeli-Palestinian con-flict.93 Mindfulness also has been shown to increase the ability to shape our behavioral responses to emotions.94 When people become non-judgmentally aware of the emotions they are experiencing, they are better able to look at situations separately from their emotions.Another technique with potential for emotion regulation is social sharing, or venting. Research shows that the open expression of emotions can help individu-als to regulate their emotions, as opposed to keeping emotions “bottled up.” Social sharing can reduce anger reactions when people can talk about the facts of a bad situation, their feelings about the situation, or any positive aspects of the situation.95 Caution must be exercised, though, because expressing your frustra-tion affects other people. In fact, whether venting emotions helps the “venter” feel better depends very much upon the listener’s response. If the listener doesn’t respond (many refuse to respond to venting), the venter actually feels worse. If the listener responds with expressions of support or validation, the venter feels better. Therefore, if we are going to vent to a coworker, we need to choose some-one who will respond sympathetically. Venting to the perceived offender rarely improves things and can result in heightening the negative emotions.96While emotion regulation techniques can help us cope with difficult workplace situations, research indicates that the effect varies. For example, a recent study in Taiwan found that all participants who worked for abusive supervisors reported emotional exhaustion and work withdrawal tendencies, but to different degrees based on the emotion regulation strategies they employed. Employees who used suppression techniques suffered greater emotional exhaustion and work with-drawal than employees who used cognitive reappraisal. This suggests that more research on the application of techniques needs to be done to help employees increase their coping skills.97Thus, while there is much promise in emotion regulation techniques, the best route to a positive workplace is to recruit positive-minded individuals and train leaders to manage their moods, job attitudes, and performance.98 The best leaders manage emotions as much as they do tasks and activities. The best employees can use their knowledge of emotion regulation to decide when to speak up and how to express themselves effectively
Ethics of Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation has important ethical implications. On one end of the con-tinuum, some people might argue that controlling your emotions is unethical because it requires a degree of acting. On the other end, other people might argue that all emotions should be controlled so you can take a dispassionate perspective. Both arguments—and all arguments in between—have ethical pros and cons you will have to decide for yourself. Consider the reasons for emotion regulation and the outcomes. Are you regulating your emotions so you don’t react inappropriately, or are you regulating your emotions so no one knows what you are thinking? Finally, consider this: you may be able to “fake it ‘til you make it.” Recent research has found that acting like you are in a good mood might put you in a good mood. In one study, a group of participants was asked to hold only an efficient conversation with a barista serving them at Starbucks, while another group was asked to act happy. The happy actors reported later that they were in much better moods.100Now that we have studied the role of emotions and moods in organizational behavior, let’s consider the opportunities for more specific applications that our understanding provides
OB Applications of Emotions and Moods: Our understanding of emotions and moods can affect many aspects of organizational behavior including the selection process, decision making, creativity, motivation, leadership, negotiation, customer service, job attitudes, deviant workplace behavior, and safety. Let’s think through each of these
- selection: One implication from the evidence on EI is that employers should consider it a factor in hiring employees, especially for jobs that demand a high degree of social interaction. In fact, more employers are starting to use EI measures to hire people. For example, a study of U.S. Air Force recruiters showed that top-performing recruiters exhibited high levels of EI. Using these findings, the Air Force revamped its selection criteria. A follow-up investigation found hires who had high EI scores were 2.6 times more successful than those who didn’t
- Decision Making: Moods and emotions have effects on decision making that managers should understand. Positive emotions and moods seem to help people make sound decisions. Positive emotions also enhance problem-solving skills, so positive people find better solutions.101OB researchers continue to debate the role of negative emotions and moods in decision making. One recent study suggested that people who are saddened by events may make the same decisions as before, while people who are angered by events might make stronger (though not necessarily better) choices than before.102 Another study found that participants made choices reflecting more originality in a negative mood.103 Still other research indicated that individu-als in a negative mood may take higher risks than when in a positive mood.104 Taken together, these and other studies suggest negative (and positive) emotions impact decision making, but that there are other variables which require furtherresearch
- Creativity: As we see throughout this text, one goal of leadership is to maximize employee productivity through creativity. Creativity is influenced by emotions and moods, but there are two schools of thought on the relationship. Much research sug-gests that people in good moods tend to be more creative than people in bad moods.106 People in good moods produce more ideas and more options, and others think their ideas are original.107 It seems that people experiencing posi-tive moods or emotions are more flexible and open in their thinking, which may explain why they’re more creative.108 Supervisors should actively try to keep em-ployees happy because doing so creates more good moods (employees like their leaders to encourage them and provide positive feedback on a job well done), which in turn leads people to be more creative.109Some researchers, however, do not believe a positive mood makes people more creative. They argue that when people are in positive moods, they may relax (“If I’m in a good mood, things must be going okay, and I don’t need to think of new ideas”) and not engage in the critical thinking necessary for some forms of creativity.110 Individuals who worry more may perform better on creative tasks than those who are less neurotic.Determining which perspective is correct may lie in thinking of moods some-what differently. Rather than looking at positive or negative affect, it’s possible to conceptualize moods as active feelings like anger, fear, or elation and con-trast these with deactivating moods like sorrow, depression, or serenity. All the activating moods, whether positive or negative, seem to lead to more creativity, whereas deactivating moods lead to less.111 We discussed earlier that other fac-tors such as fatigue may boost creativity. A study of 428 students found they performed best on a creative problem-solving task when they were fatigued, suggesting that tiredness may free the mind to consider novel solutions.
- Motivation: Several studies have highlighted the importance of moods and emotions on mo-tivation. One study asked two groups of people to solve word puzzles. The first group saw a funny video clip intended to put them in a good mood first. The other group was not shown the clip and started working on the puzzles right away. The positive-mood group reported higher expectations of being able to solve the puzzles, worked harder at them, and did solve more as a result.113 Another study looked at the moods of insurance sales agents in Taiwan.114 Agents in a good mood were found to be more helpful toward their coworkers and also felt better about themselves. These factors in turn led to superior performance in the form of higher sales and better supervisor reports of performance.Giving people performance feedback—whether real or fake—influences their mood, which then influences their motivation.115 A cycle can be created in which positive moods cause people to be more creative, leading to positive feedback from those observing their work. The feedback further reinforces the positive mood, which makes people perform even better, and so on. Overall, the findings suggest a manager may enhance employee motivation—and performance—by encouraging good moods. Leaders are perceived as more effective when they share positive emotions, and followers are more creative in a positive emotional environment. What about when leaders are sad? Research found that leader displays of sadness increased the analytic performance of followers, perhaps because followers attended more closely to tasks to help the leaders.118Corporate executives know emotional content is critical for employees to buy into their vision of the company’s future and accept change. When higher-ups offer new visions, especially with vague or distant goals, it is often difficult for employees to accept the changes they’ll bring. By arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders may help managers and employees alike to accept change and feel connected to the new plan
- Negotiation: Have you considered the potential of using emotions and moods to enhance your negotiation skills? Several studies suggest that a negotiator who feigns anger has an advantage over an opponent. Why? Because when a negotiator shows anger, the opponent concludes the negotiator has conceded all he or she can and so gives in.119 However, anger should be used selectively in negotiation: angry negotiators who have less information or less power than their opponents have significantly worse outcomes.120As in the use of any emotion, context matters. Displaying a negative emotion (such as anger) can be effective, but feeling bad about your performance appears to impair future negotiations. Individuals who do poorly in negotiation experi-ence negative emotions, develop negative perceptions of their counterparts, and are less willing to share information or be cooperative in future negotiations.121Altogether, the best negotiators are probably those who remain emotionally detached. One study of people who suffered damage to the emotional centers of their brains suggested that unemotional people may be the best negotiators because they’re not likely to overcorrect when faced with negative outcome
- Negotiation: Have you considered the potential of using emotions and moods to enhance your negotiation skills? Several studies suggest that a negotiator who feigns anger has an advantage over an opponent. Why? Because when a negotiator shows anger, the opponent concludes the negotiator has conceded all he or she can and so gives in.119 However, anger should be used selectively in negotiation: angry negotiators who have less information or less power than their opponents have significantly worse outcomes.120As in the use of any emotion, context matters. Displaying a negative emotion (such as anger) can be effective, but feeling bad about your performance appears to impair future negotiations. Individuals who do poorly in negotiation experi-ence negative emotions, develop negative perceptions of their counterparts, and are less willing to share information or be cooperative in future negotiations.121Altogether, the best negotiators are probably those who remain emotionally detached. One study of people who suffered damage to the emotional centers of their brains suggested that unemotional people may be the best negotiators because they’re not likely to overcorrect when faced with negative outcomes
- Customer Service: Workers’ emotional states influence the level of customer service they give, which in turn influences levels of repeat business and customer satisfaction.123 This result is primarily due to emotional contagion—the “catching” of emotions from others.124 When someone experiences positive emotions and laughs and smiles at you, you tend to respond positively. Of course, the opposite is true as well.Studies indicate a matching effect between employee and customer emotions. In the employee-to-customer direction, research finds that customers who catch the positive moods or emotions of employees shop longer. In the other direction, when an employee feels unfairly treated by a customer, it’s harder for him to display the positive emotions his organization expects.125 High-quality customer service makes demands on employees because it often puts them in a state of emotional dissonance, which can be damaging to the employee and the organi-zation. Managers can interrupt negative contagion by fostering positive moods.
- Job Attitudes: There is good news and bad news about the relationship between moods and job attitudes, in that both are affected by work and home events. Ever hear the advice “Never take your work home with you,” meaning you should forget about work once you go home? That’s easier said than done. The good news is that it appears a positive mood at work can spill over to your off-work hours, and a negative mood at work can be restored to a positive mood after a break. Several studies have shown people who had a good day at work tend to be in a better mood at home that evening, and vice versa.126 Other research has found that although people do emotionally take their work home with them, by the next day the effect is usually gone.127 The bad news is that the moods of your household may interfere with yours. As you might expect, one study found if one member of a couple was in a negative mood during the workday, the nega-tive mood spilled over to the spouse at night.128 Thus, the relationship between moods and job attitudes is reciprocal—the way our workday goes colors our moods, but our moods also affect the way we see our jobs.
- Deviant Workplace Behaviors: Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes people can behave in ways that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both. As we saw in Chapter 1, these actions are called counterproductive work behaviors (CWB).129 They can be traced to negative emotions and can take many forms. People who feel negative emotions are more likely than others to engage in short-term deviant behavior at work, such as gossiping or surfing the Internet,130 though negative emotions can also lead to more serious forms of CWB.For instance, envy is an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for having something you don’t have but strongly desire—such as a better work assignment, larger office, or higher salary. It can lead to malicious deviant behaviors. An envious employee could undermine other employees and take all the credit for things others accomplished. Angry people look for other people to blame for their bad mood, interpret other people’s behavior as hostile, and have trouble considering others’ points of view.131 It’s also not hard to see how these thought processes can lead directly to verbal or physical aggression.A recent study in Pakistan found that anger correlated with more aggressive CWBs such as abuse against others and production deviance, while sadness did not. Interestingly, neither anger nor sadness predicted workplace withdrawal, which suggests that managers need to take employee expressions of anger seriously; employees may stay with an organization and continue to act aggres-sively toward others.132 Once aggression starts, it’s likely that other people will become angry and aggressive, so the stage is set for a serious escalation of nega-tive behavior. Managers therefore need to stay connected with their employees to gauge emotions and emotional intensity levels.
- Safety and Injury at Work: Research relating negative affectivity to increased injuries at work suggests em-ployers might improve health and safety (and reduce costs) by ensuring workers aren’t engaged in potentially dangerous activities when they’re in a bad mood. Bad moods can contribute to injury at work in several ways.133 Individuals in negative moods tend to be more anxious, which can make them less able to cope effectively with hazards. A person who is always fearful will be more pes-simistic about the effectiveness of safety precautions because she feels she’ll just get hurt anyway, or she might panic or freeze up when confronted with a threatening situation. Negative moods also make people more distractable, and distractions can obviously lead to careless behaviors.Selecting positive team members can contribute toward a positive work environ-ment because positive moods transmit from team member to team member. One study of 130 leaders and their followers found that leaders who are charismatic transfer their positive emotions to their followers through a contagion effect.134 Itmakes sense, then, to choose team members predisposed to positive moods.
