L9 Emotion Function Flashcards
(37 cards)
What did emotion used to be studied in terms of?
It used to be studied in terms of outcomes e.g. work stress
What does more recent research focus on?
The dynamic elements of emotion like how they influence day to day work performance, organisational dynamics, team spirit, organisational identity and job processes
What are the different emotions experienced within a typical workplace?
Jealousy, stress, pride, sadness, anger, love, disgust etc.
Sometimes emotion can be written into the job role e.g. flight attendants, funeral directors, bouncer
What is emotional labour?
Introduced by Hochschild (1983)
Act of displaying appropriate emotions in exchange for a wage
The effort, planning and control needed to express organisationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions
What are display rules?
Emotions employees are expected to display
Are a function of societal, occupational and organisational norms
Can be implicit or explicit
How can EL be accomplished?
By 2 main methods:
- Surface acting - employee displays but doesn’t experience the emotion
- Deep acting - employee displays and experiences the emotion. This can be achieved by invoking thoughts and images congruent with the emotion likely to lead to a more authentic display
What are the potential positive consequences of EL for organisations?
Immediate gains e.g. sales
Encore gains e.g. repeat business
Contagion gains e.g. word of mouth
What are the potential positive consequences of EL for employees?
Performance e.g. tips
Physical and mental well being
Can lead to personal accomplishment or to emotional exhaustion
What did a meta-analysis looking at the effects of EL find (Hilsheger & Schewe, 2011)?
Surface acting has a negative relationship with well-being and a weak negative relationship with performance
Deep acting has no relationship with well-being but a positive relationship with emotional performance and customer satisfaction
When are adverse effects more likely?
When there is a mismatch between the displayed and felt emotion and display rules (emotional deviance)
It can be serious if the rules have been internalised e.g. a nurse who can’t express empathy due to burnout
When does dissonance occur?
When expressed emotions satisfy display rules but they clash with actual feelings
Can sometimes help the employee remain professionally detached but may also cause personal estrangement
Why should social identity theory be considered?
Employees who identify with their role with feel more authentic in complying with the display rules
But will suffer more if the organisation fails or if they cannot fulfil the demands
Why should the social interaction model be considered?
Personal outcome may depend on the response of the customer/client
So need positive feedback to see benefits
How are work-home issues involved?
Role overload may occur when emotion management is high at work and at home
Role conflict may occur when emotion norms differ at work and at home
What are some potential methods for managing EL?
Training, feedback, rewards, stories, socialisation, scripts
Why does EL raise ethical and practical issues?
Do organisations have the right to govern what emotion employees feel and express at work?
How successful are they?
Been argued that formalised display expectations should be replaced by more humanistic practices which value the employee
What did Parkinson’s (1991) study of hairdressers find?
Interviewed women on youth training scheme
Employees were encouraged to project authentic pleasant hospitality, must adjust to the emotional role
Hairdressers who didn’t deceive had a higher job satisfaction score and well being
The extent to which they displayed openness accounted for half the variance in tips
Salons may actually select hairdressers on the basis of expressiveness as expressiveness is harder to train, openness improves more over time
What did Sutton (1991) find whilst working along side debt collectors?
They used more experienced collectors with more delinquent debtors
Collectors were selected, socialised and rewarded for:
- Conveying urgency (high arousal and hint or irritation) and for using contingent emotional expression
What were the contingent strategies the debt collectors used?
Warm towards anxious debtors and calm to angry debtors as they were over-aroused and couldn’t focus on the debt
Irritated/angry towards indifferent/friendly/sad debtors as they were under aroused
Was there dissonance amongst the debt collectors?
Their emotions matched the display rules when debtors are anxious or indifferent but there is a clash when debtors are friendly, sad or angry
How were they taught to cope with the dissonance?
Detachment - think of them as a bill you have to pay
Appraisal - remind self that they aren’t mad at you
Release feelings outside the call
What is Affective Events Theory (Weiss et al., 1996)?
A theoretical account of causes, consequences and structure of affective experience at work
Events at work were seen as causes of affective experiences - these directly affect some behaviours and indirectly affect others via influence on attitudes
What framework did Totterdell and Niven (2014) come up with?
Framework for looking at affective events theory
Characteristics of the work environment give rise tho these work events e.g. job demands, social environment
Emotional responses are affected by personal characteristics and emotion regulation abilities
This can affect attitudes, cognitive performance, behaviour and citizenship at work
It can also affect other’s emotions due to emotion contagion
What is flow?
A pleasurable state that occurs when faced with a challenge but you have the skills to meet it
May lose track of time in this state
Get a sense of satisfaction
People’s quality of experience of being in a condition of flow is usually more affected by whether they are at home or work
