MGMT-591

Chapter-4

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1 Differentiate between emotions and moods.
2 Discuss whether emotions are rational and what functions they serve.
3 Identify the sources of emotions and moods.
4 Show the impact emotional labor has on employees.
5 Describe affective events theory and its applications.
6 Contrast the evidence for and against the existence of emotional intelligence.
7 Identify strategies for emotion regulation and their likely effects.
8 Apply concepts about emotions and moods to specific OB issues.

AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: READING YOUR MIND

Imagine you’re sitting in a plastic chair in a dim basement classroom. The only sound is the instructor’s voice in the dullest instructional film you have ever seen. You start to stare. Suddenly, your ear bud crackles to life. “I see you are feeling bored,” a computer says, and the video switches to today’s high-energy management lesson. Is this the classroom of the future?

Thanks to affective computing, which allows computers to read emotions from facial expressions, middle-school classrooms have already tested this kind of technology. Researchers hope it can soon be used to tell whether students in online classes are bored and need more challenging questions, for instance, or confused and need more help. The potential ranges far beyond education to limitless applications for managing people in organizations. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab is currently programming computers to use 24 facial points to infer an emotion, for instance. What if computers could be made emotionally intelligent, to help a person get past frustration into productivity? What if managers could automatically receive reports on virtual employees’ emotions? What if sensors could help employees stay well by providing feedback on their emotional reactions to stress?

Affective computing can provide managers with in-the-moment help. At MIT’s lab, a tiny traffic light, visible only to the wearer, flashes yellow when a listener’s face indicates lack of engagement in the conversation and red for complete disengagement. These cues could help a manager delivering important safety information to an employee, for instance. The MIT team has also developed wristbands that sense emotional states and activity levels. These could help managers work with employees who are on the Asperger’s or autism spectrum. “With this technology in the future, we’ll be able to understand things . . . that we weren’t able to see before, things that calm them, things that stress them,” said Rosalind Picard, the team’s director.

With this possibility comes responsibility, of course. There are obvious ethical issues that will only grow with the technology’s increasing sophistication. Employees may not want computers to read their emotions either for their managers or for automatic feedback. “We want to have some control over how we display ourselves to others,” said Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute.

There are also limits to affective computing’s ability to interpret emotions correctly, particularly across cultures. Work is progressing in Egypt and other countries, but “if we don’t have enough samples, across cultures and age ranges, the machine won’t be able to discriminate these subtle expressions,” said Rana el Kaliouby of the MIT lab. Organizations will eventually have to decide when it is appropriate to read employees’ emotions, as well as which emotions. In the meantime, according to affective computing experts, people are still the best readers of emotions from facial cues. Perhaps there is an opportunity to get to know your employees before the cameras roll.

Sources: “Affective Computing,” MIT webpage, http://affect.media.mit.edu/; “Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction 2013,” IEEE Computer Society Annual Conference webpage, www.acii2013.org/; and K. Weintraub, “But How Do You Really Feel? Someday the Computer May Know,” The New York Times (October 16, 2012), p. D3.

Whether or not your employer has a sensor trained on you to gauge your emotions, your emotions do matter to the workplace. It might surprise you that, until recently, the field of OB has given the topic of emotions little attention.1 Why? We offer two possible explanations.

First is the myth of rationality.2 Until very recently, the protocol of the work world kept a damper on emotions. A well-run organization didn’t allow employees to express frustration, fear, anger, love, hate, joy, grief, or similar feelings thought to be the antithesis of rationality. Although researchers and managers knew emotions were an inseparable part of everyday life, they tried to create organizations that were emotion-free. Of course, that wasn’t possible.

The second explanation is that many believed emotions of any kind were disruptive.3 Researchers looked at strong negative emotions—especially anger—that interfered with an employee’s ability to work effectively. They rarely viewed emotions as constructive or contributing to enhanced performance.

Certainly some emotions, particularly exhibited at the wrong time, can hinder performance. But employees do bring their emotions to work every day, and no study of OB would be comprehensive without considering their role in workplace behavior.

How Are You Feeling Right Now?

In the Self-Assessment Library (available in MyManagementLab), take assessment IV.D.1 (How Are You Feeling Right Now?) and answer the following questions.

What was higher—your positive mood score or negative mood score? How do these scores compare with those of your classmates?
Did your score surprise you? Why or why not?
What sorts of things influence your positive moods, your negative moods?

What Are Emotions and Moods?

Differentiate between emotions and moods.

In our analysis, we’ll need three terms that are closely intertwined: affect, emotions, and moods.

Affect is a generic term that covers a broad range of feelings people experience, including both emotions and moods.4 Emotions are intense feelings directed at someone or something.5 Moods are less intense feelings than emotions and often (though not always) arise without a specific event acting as a stimulus.6

affect

A broad range of feelings that people experience.

emotions

Intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.

moods

Feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.

Most experts believe emotions are more fleeting than moods.7 For example, if someone is rude to you, you’ll feel angry. That intense emotion probably comes and goes fairly quickly, maybe even in a matter of seconds. When you’re in a bad mood, though, you can feel bad for several hours.

Emotions are reactions to a person (seeing a friend at work may make you feel glad) or an event (dealing with a rude client may make you feel frustrated). You show your emotions when you’re “happy about something, angry at someone, afraid of something.”8 Moods, in contrast, aren’t usually directed at a person or an event. But emotions can turn into moods when you lose focus on the event or object that started the feeling. And, by the same token, good or bad moods can make you more emotional in response to an event. So when a colleague criticizes how you spoke to a client, you might show emotion (anger) toward a specific object (your colleague). But as the specific emotion dissipates, you might just feel generally dispirited. You can’t attribute this feeling to any single event; you’re just not your normal self. You might then overreact to other events. This affect state describes a mood. Exhibit 4-1 shows the relationships among affect, emotions, and mood.

Exhibit 4-1

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. Some of these differences—that emotions are more likely to be caused by a specific event and emotions are more fleeting than moods—we just discussed. Other differences are subtler. For example, unlike moods, emotions like anger and disgust tend to be more clearly revealed by facial expressions. 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.9

Finally, the exhibit shows that emotions and moods are closely connected and can influence each other. Getting your dream job may generate the emotion of joy, which can put you in a good mood for several days. Similarly, if you’re in a good or bad mood, it might make you experience a more intense positive or negative emotion than otherwise. In a bad mood, you might blow up in response to a co-worker’s comment that would normally have generated only a mild reaction.

Affect, emotions, and moods are separable in theory; in practice the distinction isn’t always crystal-clear. In some areas, researchers have studied mostly moods, in other areas mainly emotions. So, when we review the OB topics on emotions and moods, you may see more information about emotions in one area and about moods in another. This is simply the state of the research.

The Basic Emotions

How many emotions are there? There are dozens, including anger, contempt, enthusiasm, envy, fear, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, disgust, happiness, hate, hope, jealousy, joy, love, pride, surprise, and sadness. Numerous researchers have tried to limit them to a fundamental set.10 But some argue that it makes no sense to think in terms of “basic” emotions because even emotions we rarely experience, such as shock, can have a powerful effect on us.11

Myth or Science? “Smile, and the Work World Smiles with You”

It is true that a smile is used as social currency in most organizations to create a positive atmosphere, and it usually creates an unconscious reflexive return smile. However, anyone who has ever smiled at an angry manager knows this doesn’t always work. In truth, the giving and withholding of smiles is an unconscious power play of office politics.

New research on the “boss effect” suggests that the amount of power and status a person feels over another person dictates who will smile. Subordinates generally smile more often than their bosses smile back at them. However, the perception of power is complex and varies by national culture: in a recent study, Chinese workers reflexively smiled only at bosses who had the power to give them negative job evaluations, while U.S. participants smiled most to managers perceived to have higher social power. Other researchers found that when individuals felt powerful, they usually didn’t return even a high-ranking individual’s smile. Conversely, when people felt powerless, they returned everyone’s smiles.

While we think of smiling as a choice, smiling (or concealing a smile) is often unconscious. Researchers are finding that social pressure affects neurobiology. “It shapes your neural architecture,” said cognitive neuroscientist Sook-Lei Liew. Smile reactions are, therefore, partially involuntary; when smiling is a product of our attitudes, it can become an unconscious process. Thus, “Your feelings about power and status seem to dictate how much you are willing to return a smile to another person,” cognitive neuroscientist Evan Carr affirmed.

The science of smiling transcends the expression of emotion. While an angry manager may not smile back, a happy manager might not as well, according to the “boss effect” research. “The relationship of what we show on our face and how we feel is a very loose one,” said Arvid Kappas, a professor of emotion research at Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. This suggests that, when we want to display positive emotions to others, we should do more than smile, such as when service representatives try to create happy moods in their customers with excited voice pitch, encouraging gestures, and energetic body movement.

The science of smiling is an area of current research, but it is clear already that knowing about the “boss effect” suggests many practical applications. For one, managers and employees can be made more aware of ingrained tendencies toward others and, through careful self-observation, change their habits. Comprehensive displays of positive emotion using voice inflection, gestures, and word choice may also be more helpful in building good business relationships than the simple smile.

Sources: R. L. Hotz, “Too Important to Smile Back: The ‘Boss Effect,’” The Wall Street Journal (October 16, 2012), p. D2; E. Kim and D. J. Yoon, “Why Does Service with a Smile Make Employees Happy? A Social Interaction Model,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97 (2012), pp. 1059–1967; and K. Weintraub, “But How Do You Really Feel? Someday the Computer May Know,” The New York Times (October 16, 2012), p. D3.

As the complexity of affective computing programming we discussed at the beginning of the chapter shows, psychologists try to identify basic emotions by studying facial expressions but have found the process difficult.12 One problem is that some emotions are too complex to be easily represented on our faces. Cultures also have norms that govern emotional expression, so the way we experience an emotion isn’t always the same as the way we show it. People in the United States and the Middle East recognize a smile as indicating happiness, but in the Middle East a smile is also more likely to be seen as a sign of sexual attraction, so women have learned not to smile at men. In collectivist countries, people are more likely to believe another’s emotional displays have something to do with the relationship between them, while people in individualistic cultures don’t think others’ emotional expressions are directed at them. French retail clerks, for example, are infamous for being surly toward customers. German shoppers have reportedly been turned off by Walmart’s friendly greeters and helpful staff.13

It’s unlikely psychologists or philosophers will ever completely agree on a set of basic emotions, or even on whether there is such a thing. Still, many researchers agree on six essentially universal emotions—anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise.14 Some even plot them along a continuum: happiness—surprise—fear—sadness—anger—disgust.15 The closer two emotions are to each other on this continuum, the more likely people will confuse them. We sometimes mistake happiness for surprise, but rarely do we confuse happiness and disgust. In addition, as we’ll see later on, cultural factors can also influence interpretations.

The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affect

One way to classify emotions is to ask whether they are positive or negative.16 Positive emotions—such as joy and gratitude—express a favorable evaluation or feeling. Negative emotions—such as anger or guilt—express the opposite. Keep in mind that emotions can’t be neutral. Being neutral is being nonemotional.17

When we group emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood states because we are now looking at them more generally instead of isolating one particular emotion. In Exhibit 4-2, excited is a pure marker of high positive affect, while boredom is a pure marker of low negative affect. Nervous is a pure marker of high negative affect; relaxed is a pure marker of low positive affect. Finally, some emotions—such as contentment (a mixture of high positive affect and low positive affect) and sadness (a mixture of low negative affect and high negative affect)—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.

Exhibit 4-2

The Structure of Mood

So, we can think of positive affect as a mood dimension consisting of positive emotions such as excitement, alertness, and elation at the high end and contentedness, calmness, and serenity at the low end. Negative affect is a mood dimension consisting of nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end and boredom, depression, and fatigue at the low end. (Note: Positive and negative affect are moods. We’re using these labels, rather than positive mood and negative mood, because that’s how researchers label them.)

positive affect

A mood dimension that consists of specific positive emotions such as excitement, self-assurance, and cheerfulness at the high end and boredom, sluggishness, and tiredness at the low end.

negative affect

A mood dimension that consists of emotions such as nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end and relaxation, tranquility, and poise at the low end.

Negative emotions are likely to become negative moods. People think about events that created strong negative emotions five times as long as they do about events that created strong positive ones.18 So, we should expect people to recall negative experiences more readily than positive ones. Perhaps one reason is that, for most of us, negative experiences also are more unusual. 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.19 So for most people, positive moods are somewhat more common than negative moods. The positivity offset also appears to operate at work. One study of customer-service representatives in a British call center (a job where it’s probably difficult to feel positive) revealed people reported experiencing positive moods 58 percent of the time.20

positivity offset

The tendency of most individuals to experience a mildly positive mood at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on).

Does the degree to which people experience these positive and negative emotions vary across cultures? Yes. In China, people report experiencing fewer positive and negative emotions than people in other cultures, and the emotions they experience are less intense. Compared with Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese are more like U.S. workers in their experience of emotions: On average, they report more positive and fewer negative emotions than their Chinese counterparts.21 People in most cultures appear to experience certain positive and negative emotions, but the frequency and intensity varies to some degree. Despite these differences, people from all over the world interpret negative and positive emotions in much the same way. We all view negative emotions, such as hate, terror, and rage, as dangerous and destructive, and we desire positive emotions, such as joy, love, and happiness. However, some cultures value certain emotions more than others. U.S. culture values enthusiasm, while the Chinese consider negative emotions more useful and constructive than do people in the United States. Recent research has suggested that negative affect actually has many benefits. Visualizing the worst-case scenario often allows people to accept present circumstances and cope, for instance.22 Negative affect can allow managers to think more critically and fairly, other research indicates.23 Pride is generally a positive emotion in Western individualistic cultures such as the United States, but Eastern cultures such as China and Japan view pride as undesirable.24

The Function of Emotions

Discuss whether emotions are rational and what functions they serve.

Do Emotions Make Us Irrational?

How often have you heard someone say, “Oh, you’re just being emotional”? You might have been offended. The famous astronomer Carl Sagan once wrote, “Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.” These observations suggest rationality and emotion are in conflict and that if you exhibit emotion you are likely to act irrationally. One team of authors argues that 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.25 These perspectives suggest the demonstration or even experience of emotions can make us seem weak, brittle, or irrational. However, research is increasingly showing that emotions are actually critical to rational thinking. There has been evidence of such a link for a long time.

Consider Phineas Gage, a railroad worker in Vermont. One September day in 1848, a 3-foot 7-inch iron bar flew into his lower-left jaw and out through the top of his skull from an explosive charge. Remarkably, Gage survived his injury, was able to read and speak, and performed well above average on cognitive ability tests. However, he completely lost his ability to experience emotion. Gage’s inability to express emotion eventually took away his ability to reason. As a result, he often behaved erratically and against his self-interests. Gage drifted from job to job, eventually joining a circus. In commenting on Gage’s condition, one expert noted, “Reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were . . . emotions and feelings may not be intruders in the bastion of reason at all: they may be enmeshed in its networks, for worse and for better.”26

Photo 4-1 By studying brain injuries, such as the injury experienced by Phineas Gage whose skull is illustrated here, researchers discovered an important link between emotions and rational thinking. They learned that our emotions provide us with valuable information that helps our thinking process.

Source: BSIP/Science Source.

The example of Phineas Gage and many other brain injury studies show we must have the ability to experience emotions to be rational. Why? Because our emotions provide important information about how we understand the world around us. For instance, a recent study indicated that individuals in a negative mood are better able to discern truthful from accurate information than people in a happy mood.27 Would we really want a manager to make a decision about firing an employee without regarding either his or the employee’s emotions? The key to good decision making is to employ both thinking and feeling in our decisions.

Do Emotions Make Us Ethical?

A growing body of research has begun to examine the relationship between emotions and moral attitudes.28 It was previously believed that, like decision making in general, most ethical decision making was based on higher-order cognitive processes, but research on moral emotions increasingly questions this perspective. Examples of moral emotions include sympathy for the suffering of others, guilt about our own immoral behavior, anger about injustice done to others, contempt for those who behave unethically, and disgust at violations of moral norms. Numerous studies suggest that these reactions are largely based on feelings rather than on cold cognition. However, we see our moral boundaries as logical and reasonable, not as emotional. Our beliefs are actually shaped by our groups, which influence our perceptions of others, resulting in unconscious responses and a feeling that shared emotions are “right.” Unfortunately, this feeling allows us sometimes to justify purely emotional reactions as “ethical.”29 In work and in life, our moral judgments therefore have more to do with emotions than with cognitions, yet we tend to think the opposite, especially when those judgments are shared by fellow members of our in-group.

You can think about this research in your own life to see how the emotional model of ethics operates. Consider the massive earthquake that struck Japan in 2011. When you heard about it, 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 do have at least 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, and this emotional reaction will often be a good thing.

Sources of Emotions and Moods

Identify the sources of emotions and moods.

Have you ever said, “I got up on the wrong side of the bed today”? Have you ever snapped at a co-worker or family member for no particular reason? If you have, it probably makes you wonder where emotions and moods come from. Here we discuss some of the primary influences.

Personality

Moods and emotions have a trait component: Most 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. Contrast Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, for instance. Ballmer is easily moved to emote; software engineer Mark Lucovsky reported that when he told Ballmer he was leaving Microsoft for Google, Ballmer threw a chair against a wall and said of Google’s CEO, “I’m going to f—ing bury that guy.”30 Zuckerman, conversely, is notably distant and unemotional. Ballmer and Zuckerman probably differ in affect intensity , or how strongly they experience their emotions.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.

affect intensity

Individual differences in the strength with which individuals experience their emotions.

What’s My Affect Intensity?

In the Self-Assessment Library (available in MyManagementLab), take assessment IV.D.2 (What’s My Affect Intensity?).

Time of the Day

Are you a morning person? Or do you feel best later in the day? People do vary in their moods by time of day. However, research suggests most of us actually follow the same pattern, and the nature of this pattern may surprise you. Levels of positive affect tend to peak in the late morning (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.33 As 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.35

Recently, a fascinating study assessed mood by analyzing 509 million Twitter messages from 2.4 million individuals across 84 countries.36 The researchers assessed mood by noting the presence of words connoting positive affect (happy, enthused, excited) and negative (sad, angry, anxious) affect. You can see these trends in the positive affect part of Exhibit 4-3. Daily fluctuations in mood tended to follow a similar pattern in most countries. Specifically, regardless of the day of the week, positive affect increased after sunrise, tended to peak mid-morning, remained stable until roughly 7 p.m., and then tended to increase again until the midnight drop. These results are similar to what we reported above from previous research. A major difference, though, was what happens in the evening. As we noted earlier, most research suggests that positive affect tends to drop after 7 p.m., whereas this study suggests that it increases before the midnight decline. We’ll have to wait for further research to see which description is accurate. The negative affect trends in this study were more consistent with past research, showing that negative affect is lowest in the morning and tends to increase over the course of the day and evening.

Exhibit 4-3

Time of Day Effects on Mood of U.S. Adults as Rated from Twitter Postings

Note: Based on analysis of U.S. Twitter postings and coding of words that represent positive feelings (delight, enthusiasm) and negative feelings (fear, guilt). Lines represent percent of total words in Twitter post that convey these moods. Sources: Based on S. A. Golder and M. W. Macy, “Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures,” Science 333 (2011), pp. 1878–1881; A. Elejalde-Ruiz, “Seize the day,” Chicago Tribune (September 5, 2012), downloaded June 20, 2013 from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/.

Are 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.37 As shown in Day of the Week Exhibit 4-4, again based on the study of over 500 million 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. The same pattern even seems to hold in countries—such as many Muslim countries—where the weekend occurs on different days. 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 many 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).

Weather

When 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 conducted by multiple researchers suggests weather has little effect on mood, at least for most people.34 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).”35 Illusory correlation , which occurs when we associate two events that in reality have no connection, explains why people tend to think nice weather improves their mood.

illusory correlation

The tendency of people to associate two events when in reality there is no connection.

Stress

As you might imagine, stressful daily events at work (a nasty e-mail, an impending deadline, the loss of a big sale, a reprimand from the boss) negatively affect moods. The effects of stress also build over time. As the authors of one study note, “a constant diet of even low-level stressful events has the potential to cause workers to experience gradually increasing levels of strain over time.”36 Mounting levels of stress can worsen our moods, and we experience more negative emotions. Although sometimes we thrive on stress, most of us find stress takes a toll on our mood. Recent research also suggests that when situations are overly emotionally charged, we have a natural response to disengage, to literally look away.37

Social Activities

Do you tend to be happiest when out with friends? For most people, social activities increase positive mood and have little effect on 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.38 Does the type of social activity matter? Indeed it does. Research suggests 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).39

Sleep

U.S. adults report sleeping less than adults a generation ago.40 According to researchers and public health specialists, a large portion of the U.S. workforce suffers from sleep deprivation: 41 million workers are able to sleep less than six hours per night. Sleep quality affects mood, and increased fatigue puts workers at health risks of disease, injury, and depression.41 One reason is that poor or reduced sleep impairs decision making and makes it difficult to control emotions.42 A recent study suggests poor sleep also impairs job satisfaction because people feel fatigued, irritable, and less alert.43

Exhibit 4-4

Day-of-Week Mood Effects Across Four Cultures

Source: Based on S. A. Golder and M. W. Macy, “Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures,” Science 333 (2011), pp. 1878–1881; A. Elejalde-Ruiz, “Seize the Day,” Chicago Tribune (September 5, 2012), downloaded June 20, 2013 from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/.

Photo 4-2 Blizzard Entertainment believes that exercise and social activities increase positive moods and result in happier, healthier, and more productive employees. The developer of entertainment software offers employees yoga classes, a sand volleyball court, basketball court, bike track, and fitness center.

Source: Ana Venegas/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom.

Exercise

You often hear people should exercise to improve their mood. Does “sweat therapy” really work? It appears so. Research consistently shows exercise enhances peoples’ positive mood.44 While not terribly strong overall, the effects are strongest for those who are depressed. So exercise may help put you in a better mood, but don’t expect miracles.

Age

Do young people experience more extreme positive emotions (so-called youthful exuberance) than older people? If you answered “yes,” you were wrong. One study of people ages 18 to 94 revealed that negative emotions seem to occur less as people get older. Periods of highly positive moods lasted longer for older individuals, and bad moods faded more quickly.45 The study implies emotional experience improves with age; as we get older, we experience fewer negative emotions.

Sex

Many believe women are more emotional than men. Is there any truth to this? Evidence does confirm women are more emotionally expressive than men;46 they experience emotions more intensely, they tend to “hold onto” emotions longer than men, and they display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative emotions, except anger.47 Evidence from a study of participants from 37 different countries found that men consistently report higher levels of powerful emotions like anger, whereas women report more powerless emotions like sadness and fear. Thus, there are some sex differences in the experience and expression of emotions.48

People also tend to attribute men’s and women’s emotions in ways that might be based on stereotypes of what typical emotional reactions are. One study showed that experimental participants who read about emotional expressions interpreted women’s reactions as being dispositional (related to personality), whereas men’s reactions were interpreted as being due to the situation around them.49 For example, a picture of a sad woman led observers to believe she was acting consistently with an emotional personality type, whereas a picture of a sad man was more likely to be attributed to his having a bad day. Another study showed that participants were faster at detecting 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.50

Emotional Labor

Show the impact emotional labor has on employees.

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 interpersonal transactions at work.

emotional labor

A situation in which an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at work.

The concept of emotional labor emerged from studies of service jobs. We expect flight attendants to be cheerful, funeral directors to be sad, and doctors emotionally neutral. But emotional labor is relevant to almost every job. At the least your managers expect you to be courteous, not hostile, in your interactions with co-workers. The true challenge arises when employees have to project one emotion while feeling another. This disparity is emotional dissonance , and it can take a heavy toll. Bottled-up feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment can eventually lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout. Emotional dissonance is like cognitive dissonance discussed in the previous chapter, except that emotional dissonance concerns feelings rather than thinking. It’s from the increasing importance of emotional labor as a key component of effective job performance that we have come to understand the relevance of emotion within the field of OB.

emotional dissonance

Inconsistencies between the emotions people feel and the emotions they project.

Photo 4-3 Employees of this Apple store in Tokyo, Japan, greet customers with enthusiasm and excitement as they wait in line for the store to open on the day the iPad mini went on sale. Employees’ smiles and high fives are expressions of emotional labor that Apple requires and considers appropriate for their jobs.

Source: © Aflo Co. Ltd./Alamy.

Emotional labor creates dilemmas for employees. There are people with whom you have to work that you just plain don’t like. Maybe you consider their personality abrasive. Maybe you know they’ve said negative things about you behind your back. Regardless, your job requires you to interact with these people on a regular basis. So you’re forced to feign friendliness.

It can help you, on the job especially, if you separate emotions into felt or displayed emotions.51 Felt emotions are an individual’s actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those that the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given job. They’re not innate; they’re learned. Similarly, most of us know we’re expected to act sad at funerals, regardless of whether we consider the person’s death a loss, and to appear happy at weddings even if we don’t feel like celebrating.

felt emotions

An individual’s actual emotions.

displayed emotions

Emotions that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job.

Research suggests that at U.S. workplaces, it is expected that we should typically display positive emotions like happiness and excitement and suppress negative emotions like fear, anger, disgust, and contempt.52 Effective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a negative performance evaluation and to hide their anger when they’ve been passed over for promotion. A salesperson who hasn’t learned to smile and appear friendly, despite his or her true feelings at the moment, typically won’t last long in the job. The way we experience an emotion isn’t always the same as the way we show it.

Displaying fake emotions requires us to suppress real ones. Surface acting is hiding inner feelings and hiding 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. A health care provider trying to genuinely feel more empathy for her patients is deep acting.53 Surface acting deals with displayed emotions, and deep acting deals with felt emotions. Research in the Netherlands and Belgium indicated that surface acting is stressful to employees, while mindfulness (learning to objectively evaluate our emotional situation in the moment) is beneficial to employee well-being.54 Displaying emotions we don’t really feel is exhausting, so it is important to give employees who engage in surface displays a chance to relax and recharge. 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.55 Instructors who did chores during their breaks were only about as effective after their break as they were before. Another study found that in hospital work groups where there were heavy emotional display demands, burnout was higher than in other hospital work groups.56

surface acting

Hiding one’s inner feelings and forgoing emotional expressions in response to display rules.

deep acting

Trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on display rules.

Affective Events Theory

Describe affective events theory and its applications.

We’ve seen that emotions and moods are an important part of our lives and our work lives. But how do they influence our job performance and satisfaction? A model called affective events theory (AET) demonstrates that employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work, and this reaction influences their job performance and satisfaction.57

affective events theory (AET)

A model that suggests that workplace events cause emotional reactions on the part of employees, which then influence workplace attitudes and behaviors.

Exhibit 4-5 summarizes AET. The theory begins by recognizing that emotions are a response to an event in the work environment. The work environment includes everything surrounding the job—the variety of tasks and degree of autonomy, job demands, and requirements for expressing emotional labor. This environment creates work events that can be hassles, uplifting events, or both. Examples of hassles are colleagues who refuse to carry their share of work, conflicting directions from different managers, and excessive time pressures. Uplifting events include meeting a goal, getting support from a colleague, and receiving recognition for an accomplishment.58

These work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions, to which employees’ personalities and moods predispose them to respond with greater or lesser intensity. 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 performance and satisfaction variables, such as organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, level of effort, intention to quit, and workplace deviance.

Exhibit 4-5

Affective Events Theory

Source: Based on N. M. Ashkanasy and C. S. Daus, “Emotion in the Workplace: The New Challenge for Managers,”Academy of Management Executive (February 2002), p. 77.

Tests of affective events theory suggest the following:

An emotional episode is actually a series of emotional experiences, precipitated by a single event and containing elements of both emotions and mood cycles.
Current emotions influence job satisfaction at any given time, along with the history of emotions surrounding the event.
Because moods and emotions fluctuate over time, their effect on performance also fluctuates.
Emotion-driven behaviors are typically short in duration and of high variability.
Because emotions, even positive ones, tend to be incompatible with behaviors required to do a job, they typically have a negative influence on job performance.59

Consider an example.60 Say you work as an aeronautical engineer for Boeing. Because of the downturn in demand for commercial jets, you’ve just learned the company is considering laying off 10,000 employees, possibly including you. This event is likely to make you feel negative emotions, especially fear that you might lose your primary source of income. And because you’re prone to worry a lot and obsess about problems, this event increases your feelings of insecurity. Your worry is increased because you (1) didn’t take the risk voluntarily, (2) don’t trust your employer, (3) realize the risk is in the hands of people whose perspectives might not favor you, and (4) see no benefit if you act out.61 The layoff also sets in motion a series of smaller events that create an episode: You talk with your boss, and he assures you your job is safe; you hear rumors your department is high on the list to be eliminated; and you run into a former colleague who was laid off 6 months ago and still hasn’t found work. These events, in turn, create emotional ups and downs. One day, you’re feeling upbeat that you’ll survive the cuts. The next, you might be depressed and anxious. These emotional swings take your attention away from your work and lower your job performance and satisfaction. Finally, your response is magnified because this is the fourth-largest layoff Boeing has initiated in the past 3 years.

In summary, AET offers two important messages.62 First, emotions provide valuable insights into how workplace hassles and uplifting 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 accumulate.

Emotional Intelligence

Contrast the evidence for and against the existence of emotional intelligence.

Diane is an office manager. Her awareness of her own and others’ emotions is almost nil. She’s moody and unable to generate much enthusiasm or interest in her employees. She doesn’t understand why employees get upset with her. She often overreacts to problems and chooses the most ineffectual responses to emotional situations.63 Diane has low 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 one’s emotions accordingly in a cascading model, as shown in Exhibit 4-6. 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.64

emotional intelligence (EI)

The ability to detect and to manage emotional cues and information.

Exhibit 4-6

A Cascading Model of Emotional Intelligence

Several studies suggest EI plays an important role in job performance. One study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology found 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. The students also de-emphasized the use of the more cognitive parts of their brains.65 Another study looked at the successes and failures of 11 U.S. presidents—from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton—and evaluated them on six qualities: communication, organization, 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.66 One simulation study also showed that students who were good at identifying and distinguishing among their own feelings were able to make more profitable investment decisions.67

EI has been a controversial concept in OB, with supporters and detractors. In the following sections, we review the arguments for and against its viability.

The Case for EI

The arguments in favor of EI include its intuitive appeal, the fact that it predicts criteria that matter, and the idea that it is biologically based.

Intuitive Appeal

Intuition suggests people who can detect emotions in others, control their own emotions, and handle social interactions well have a powerful leg up in the business world. One company’s promotional materials for an EI measure claimed, “EI accounts for more than 85 percent of star performance in top leaders.”68

EI Predicts Criteria That Matter

Evidence suggests a high level of EI means a person will perform well on the job. For example, one study found EI predicted the performance of employees in a cigarette factory in China.69 A review of studies indicated that, overall, EI was weakly but consistently positively correlated with job performance, even after researchers took cognitive ability, conscientiousness, and neuroticism into account.70

Photo 4-4 These new employees of a government ward office in the city of Daejeon, South Korea, practice smiling during their training on how to be kind public employees. Researchers of emotion regulation study the strategy of surface acting, or “putting on a face,” as an appropriate response in modifying emotions in a given situation.

Source: Yonhap News/YNA/Newscom.

EI Is Biologically Based

In one study, people with damage to the brain area that governs emotional processing (part of the prefrontal cortex) scored no lower on standard measures of intelligence than people without similar damage. Nevertheless, they scored significantly lower on EI tests and were impaired in normal decision making. This study suggests EI is neurologically based in a way that’s unrelated to standard measures of intelligence.71 There is also evidence EI is genetically influenced, further supporting the idea that it measures a real underlying biological factor.72

An Ethical Choice Should Managers Use Emotional Intelligence (EI) Tests?

As we discussed in this chapter, the concept of emotional intelligence has raised some debate. One of the topic questions for managers is whether to use EI tests in the selection process. Here are some ethical considerations:

There is no commonly accepted test. For instance, researchers have recently used the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, and the newly developed Situational Judgment Test of Emotional Intelligence (SJT of EI) in studies. Researchers feel EI tests may need to be culturally specific because emotional displays vary by culture; thus, the interpretation of emotional cues differs. A recent study in India comparing the emotional intelligence scores for Indian and North American executives using the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI-2) test found the results similar but not the same, suggesting the need for modification.
Applicants may react negatively to taking an EI test in general, or to parts of it. The face recognition test, for example, may seem culturally biased to some if the subject photos are not diverse. Also, participants who score high on EI tests tend to consider them fair; applicants who score lower may not perceive the tests to be fair and can thus consider the hiring organizations unfavorably—even if they score well on other assessments.
EI tests may not be predictive of performance for all types of jobs. In a study of 600 Romanian participants, results indicated that EI was valid for salespeople, public servants, and CEOs of public hospitals, but these were all roles requiring significant social interaction. EI tests may need to be tailored for each position category or not be used when the position description does not warrant.
It remains somewhat unclear what EI tests are actually measuring. They may reflect personality or intelligence, in which case other measures might be better.
There is not enough research on how emotional intelligence affects, for instance, counterproductive work behaviors. It may not be prudent to test and select applicants who are rated high on EI when we aren’t yet certain that everything about EI leads to desired workplace outcomes.

These concerns suggest EI tests should be avoided in hiring decisions. However, because research has indicated that emotional intelligence does predict job performance to some degree, managers should not be too hasty to dismiss the tests. Rather, those wishing to use EI in hiring decisions should be aware of these issues to make informed and ethical decisions about not only whom to hire, but how.

Sources: D. Iliescu, A. Ilie, D. Ispas, and A. Ion, “Emotional Intelligence in Personnel Selection: Applicant Reactions, Criterion, and Incremental Validity,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment (September 2012), pp. 347–358; R. Sharma, “Measuring Social and Emotional Intelligence Competencies in the Indian Context,” Cross Cultural Management 19 (2012), pp. 30–47; and S. Sharma, M. Gangopadhyay, E. Austin, and M. K. Mandal, “Development and Validation of a Situational Judgment Test of Emotional Intelligence,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment (March 2013), pp. 57–73.

The Case Against EI

For all its supporters, EI has just as many critics who say it is vague and impossible to measure, and they question its validity.

EI Researchers Do Not Agree on Definitions

To many researchers, it’s not clear what EI is, because researchers use different definitions of it.73 Some have focused on tests with right and wrong answers from which we can infer someone’s ability to recognize and control emotions. This is the ability-based perspective on EI. Other researchers have viewed emotional intelligence as a broad variety of ideas that we can measure by self-reports and that are connected primarily by the fact that none of them are the same as cognitive intelligence. Not only are these two definitions different, but the measures used by each perspective are barely correlated with one another.74

EI Can’t Be Measured

Many critics have raised questions about measuring EI. Because EI is a form of intelligence, they argue, there must be right and wrong answers for it on tests. Some tests do have right and wrong answers, although the validity of some questions is doubtful. One measure asks you to associate feelings with colors, as if purple always makes us feel cool and not warm. Other measures are self-reported, such as “I’m good at ‘reading’ other people,” and have no right or wrong answers. The measures of EI are diverse, and researchers have not subjected them to as much rigorous study as they have measures of personality and general intelligence.75

EI Is Nothing but Personality with a Different Label

Some critics argue that because EI is so closely related to intelligence and personality, once you control for these factors, it has nothing unique to offer. There is some foundation to this argument. EI appears to be correlated with measures of personality, especially emotional stability.76 If this is true, then biological markers like brain activity and heritability are attributable to other well-known and much better researched psychological constructs. To some extent, researchers have resolved this issue by noting that EI is a construct partially determined by traits like cognitive intelligence, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, so it makes sense that EI is correlated with these characteristics.77

Although the field is progressing in its understanding of EI, many questions have not been answered. EI is wildly popular among consulting firms and in the popular press, but it’s still difficult to validate this construct with the research literature.

Emotion Regulation

Have you ever tried to cheer yourself up when you’re feeling down, or calm yourself when you’re feeling angry? If so, you have engaged in emotion regulation, which is part of the EI literature but is increasingly being studied as an independent concept.78 The central idea behind emotion regulation is to identify and modify the emotions you feel. Recent research suggests that emotion management ability is a strong predictor of task performance for some jobs and organizational citizenship behaviors.79

Researchers of emotion regulation often study the strategies people may employ to change their emotions. One strategy we have discussed in this chapter is surface acting, or literally “putting on a face” of appropriate response to a given situation. Surface acting doesn’t change the emotions, though, so the regulation effect is minimal. Perhaps due to the costs of expressing what we don’t feel, a recent study suggested that individuals who vary their surface-acting response may have lower job satisfaction and higher levels of work withdrawal than those who consistently use surface acting.80 Deep acting, another strategy we have covered, is less psychologically costly than surface acting because the employee is actually trying to experience the emotion. Deep acting, though less “false” than surface acting, still may be difficult because it represents acting nonetheless.

Organizational behavior researchers are therefore looking to understand strategies people may employ that yield the results of acting, like showing appropriate emotions, but mitigate the effects of acting, like emotional exhaustion and workplace withdrawal. The goal is to give employees and managers tools to monitor and modify their emotional responses to workplace situations.

Although the research is ongoing, studies indicate that effective emotion regulation techniques include acknowledging rather than suppressing our emotional responses to situations, and re-evaluating events after they occur.81 A recent study illustrates the potentially powerful effect of cognitive reappraisal. Of the Israeli participants who were shown anger-inducing information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, those who were primed to reappraise the situation showed more willingness to consider conciliatory measures toward Palestine and less support for aggressive tactics than the control group, not only immediately after the study but up to 5 months later. This suggests that cognitive reappraisal techniques may allow people to change their emotional responses, even when the subject matter is as highly emotionally charged as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.82

Another technique with potential for emotion regulation is venting. Research shows that the open expression of emotions can be helpful to the individual, as opposed to keeping emotions “bottled up.” Caution must be exercised, though, because venting, or expressing your frustration outwardly, touches 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 co-worker, we need to choose someone who will respond sympathetically. Venting to the perceived offender rarely improves things and can result in heightening the negative emotions.83

As you might suspect, not everyone is equally good at regulating his or her 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 improve their sad moods, perhaps because they are less likely than others to feel they deserve to be in a good mood.84

While it might seem in some ways desirable to regulate your emotions, research suggests there is a downside to trying to change the way you feel. Changing your emotions 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.85From another perspective, research suggests that avoiding negative emotional experiences is less likely to lead to positive moods than does seeking out positive emotional experiences.86 For example, you’re more likely to experience a positive mood if you have a pleasant conversation with a friend than if you avoid an unpleasant conversation with a hostile co-worker.

While emotion regulation techniques can help us cope with difficult workplace situations, research indicates that the effect varies. A recent study in Taiwan found that 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. This suggests that more research on the application of techniques needs to be done to help employees.87 Thus, while there is much promise in emotion regulation techniques, the best route to a positive workplace is to recruit positive-minded individuals and to train leaders to manage their moods, job attitudes, and performance.88 The best leaders manage emotions as much as they do tasks and activities.

What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?

In the Self-Assessment Library (available in MyManagementLab), take assessment I.E.1 (What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?).

OB Applications of Emotions and Moods

Identify strategies for emotion regulation and their likely effects.

In this section, we assess how an understanding of emotions and moods can improve our ability to explain and predict the selection process in organizations, decision making, creativity, motivation, leadership, interpersonal conflict, negotiation, customer service, job attitudes, and deviant workplace behaviors. We also look at how managers can influence our moods.

Selection

One implication from the evidence on EI to date 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. 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 future hires who had high EI scores were 2.6 times more successful than those who didn’t. At L’Oreal, salespersons selected on EI scores outsold those hired using the company’s old selection procedure. On an annual basis, salespeople selected for their emotional competence sold $91,370 more than other salespeople did, for a net revenue increase of $2,558,360.89

Photo 4-5 A leader of high emotional intelligence, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz bounds on stage before addressing 10,000 Starbucks managers at the firm’s Global Leadership Conference. Schultz’s optimism, excitement, and enthusiasm energize employees and motivate them to accept his vision of the company’s future.

Source: Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Decision Making

As you will see in Chapter 6, t raditional approaches to the study of decision making in organizations have emphasized rationality. But OB researchers are increasingly finding that moods and emotions have important effects on decision making.

Positive moods and emotions seem to help people make sound decisions. People in good moods or experiencing positive emotions are more likely than others to use heuristics, or rules of thumb,90 to help make good decisions quickly. Positive emotions also enhance problem-solving skills, so positive people find better solutions to problems.91

OB researchers continue to debate the role of negative emotions and moods in decision making. Although one often-cited study suggested depressed people reach more accurate judgments,92 more recent evidence hints they make poorer decisions. Why? Because depressed people are slower at processing information and tend to weigh all possible options rather than the most likely ones.93 They search for the perfect solution, when there rarely is one.

Creativity

People in good moods tend to be more creative than people in bad moods.94 They produce more ideas and more options, and others think their ideas are original.95 It seems people experiencing positive moods or emotions are more flexible and open in their thinking, which may explain why they’re more creative.96Supervisors should actively try to keep employees 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.97

Some 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 must not need to think of new ideas”) and not engage in the critical thinking necessary for some forms of creativity.98 The answer may lie in thinking of moods somewhat differently. Rather than looking at positive or negative affect, it’s possible to conceptualize moods as active feelings like anger, fear, or elation and contrast 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.99 As well, we discussed earlier that other factors 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.100

Motivation

Several studies have highlighted the importance of moods and emotions on motivation. One study set two groups of people to solving 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 results? 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.101

Another study found that giving people performance feedback—whether real or fake—influenced their mood, which then influenced their motivation.102 So, a cycle can exist in which positive moods cause people to be more creative, which leads to positive feedback from those observing their work. This positive feedback further reinforces the positive mood, which may make people perform even better, and so on.

Another study looked at the moods of insurance sales agents in Taiwan.103 Agents in a good mood were found to be more helpful toward their co-workers 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.

Leadership

Effective leaders rely on emotional appeals to help convey their messages. In fact, the expression of emotion in speeches is often the critical element that makes us accept or reject a leader’s message. Politicians, as a case in point, have learned to show enthusiasm when talking about their chances of winning an election, even when polls suggest otherwise.

Recent research has focused on the effects of transformational leaders, whom we can think of for now as extraordinary leaders (until we cover the topic more thoroughly in Chapter 12). Transformational leaders realize the effect emotion has on their followers and often freely share emotions. A study with Taiwanese military participants indicates that by sharing emotions, transformational leaders inspire positive emotions in their followers that lead to higher task performance.104

Corporate executives know emotional content is critical if employees are 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 increase the likelihood that managers and employees alike will accept change.105 Leaders who focus on inspirational goals also generate greater optimism and enthusiasm in employees, leading to more positive social interactions with co-workers and customers.106

Negotiation

Negotiation is an emotional process; however, we often say a skilled negotiator has a “poker face.” The founder of Britain’s Poker Channel, Crispin Nieboer, stated, “It is a game of bluff and there is fantastic human emotion and tension, seeing who can bluff the longest.”107 Several studies have shown that a negotiator who feigns anger has an advantage over the opponent. Why? Because when a negotiator shows anger, the opponent concludes the negotiator has conceded all he or she can and so gives in.108 Anger should be used selectively in negotiation: angry negotiators who have less information or less power than their opponents have significantly worse outcomes.109 It appears that a powerful, better-informed individual will be less willing to share information or meet an angry opponent halfway.

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 a negotiation experience negative emotions, develop negative perceptions of their counterpart, and are less willing to share information or be cooperative in future negotiations.110 Interestingly, then, while moods and emotions have benefits at work, in negotiation—unless we’re putting up a false front like feigning anger—emotions may impair negotiator performance. A 2005 study found people who suffered damage to the emotional centers of their brains (the same part that was injured in Phineas Gage) may be the best negotiators because they’re not likely to overcorrect when faced with negative outcomes.111

Customer Service

A worker’s emotional state influences customer service, which influences levels of repeat business and of customer satisfaction.112 Providing high-quality customer service makes demands on employees because it often puts them in a state of emotional dissonance. Long-term emotional dissonance is a predictor for job burnout, declines in job performance, and lower job satisfaction.113

Employees’ emotions can transfer to the customer. Studies indicate a matching effect between employee and customer emotions called emotional contagion —the “catching” of emotions from others.114 How does it work? The primary explanation is that when someone experiences positive emotions and laughs and smiles at you, you tend to respond positively. Emotional contagion is important because customers who catch the positive moods or emotions of employees shop longer. But are negative emotions and moods contagious, too? Absolutely. When an employee feels unfairly treated by a customer, for example, it’s harder for him to display the positive emotions his organization expects of him.115

emotional contagion

The process by which peoples’ emotions are caused by the emotions of others.

Job Attitudes

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. 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.116 People who have a stressful day at work also have trouble relaxing after they get off work.117 One study had married couples describing their moods when responding to timed cell phone surveys through the course of the day. As most married readers might suspect, if one member of the couple was in a negative mood during the workday, that mood spilled over to the spouse at night.118 In other words, if you’ve had a bad day at work, your spouse is likely to have an unpleasant evening. Even though people do emotionally take their work home with them, however, by the next day the effect is usually gone.119

Deviant Workplace Behaviors

Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes people often behave in ways that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both. As we saw in Chapter 1, t hese actions are called workplace deviant behaviors.120 Many can be traced to negative emotions.

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 backstab another employee, negatively distort others’ successes, and positively distort his own accomplishments.121 Angry people look for other people to blame for their bad mood, interpret other people’s behavior as hostile, and have trouble considering others’ point of view.122 It’s not hard to see how these thought processes, too, can lead directly to verbal or physical aggression.

Evidence suggests people who feel negative emotions are more likely than others to engage in short-term deviant behavior at work such as gossiping or searching the Internet.123 Of concern, a recent study with Pakistani telecommunications and IT participants found that anger correlated with more aggressive counterproductive behaviors 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 because employees may stay with an organization and continue to act aggressively toward others.124 Once aggression starts, it’s likely that other people will become angry and aggressive, so the stage is set for a serious escalation of negative behavior.

Safety and Injury at Work

Research relating negative affectivity to increased injuries at work suggests employers 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.125 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 pessimistic 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.

glOBalization! Creating Highly Productive Teams Across the Cultural Emotional Barrier

T he best teams are emotionally intelligent; each member’s emotions are discerned and respectfully considered by the leaders and by the rest of the group. Across cultures, however, this is often easier said than done. Our environments dictate the norms for displaying emotions, resulting in a cultural emotional barrier whenever members from different parts of the world interact.

Research on cultures has focused on Eastern versus Western global comparisons to describe differing belief and value systems. Eastern countries tend to be more collectivistic, whereas Western countries are more individualistic. These distinctions have a profound effect on the emotional dynamics of work teams.

It is easy to see how misunderstandings can lead to ineffective group dynamics. A member of an Eastern culture, for instance, will tend to focus on the good of the team over his or her personal success. He or she will likely value harmony and cooperation and may consider any emotional display of anger, disagreement, or contempt to be inappropriate. A group of Eastern members, therefore, will achieve high team productivity in a very different manner from a team of Western members, who value freedom of expression, directness, and other ways of showing individuality. The Western members may be more comfortable working independently than the Eastern members and be more accepting of emotional displays of frustration or enthusiasm. The Eastern members may look for a balance of negative and positive experiences, while the Western members may tally only the positive experiences.

These are generalizations, of course. Any examination of cultures will look for similarities between people. Yet just as individuals’ emotional expressions will vary by personality and experience, so are we and our emotions influenced by our cultures. Knowing where someone’s emotions are “coming from” can be an important step toward understanding and thus working well with your teammates. For a team to be highly productive, members need to become emotionally sensitive to the viewpoints of others, and leaders need to learn culturally appropriate emotional responses to motivate team members. Through better understanding of cultures and emotions, multicultural teams can capitalize on the strengths that each individual viewpoint can contribute to organizational goals.

Sources: G. M. Fisk, and J. P. Friesen, “Perceptions of Leader Emotion Regulation and LMX as Predictors of Followers’ Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors,” Leadership Quarterly (February 2012), pp. 1–12; E. J. Hartel and X.-Y. Liu, “How Emotional Climate in Teams Affects Workplace Effectiveness in Individualistic and Collectivistic Contexts,” Journal of Management & Organization (July 2012), pp. 573–585; and V. A. Visser et al., “How Leader Displays of Happiness and Sadness Influence Follower Performance: Emotional Contagion and Creative versus Analytical Performance,” Leadership Quarterly (February 2013), pp. 172–188.

How Managers Can Influence Moods

Apply concepts about emotions and moods to specific OB issues.

You can usually improve a friend’s mood by sharing a funny video clip, giving the person a small bag of candy, or even offering a pleasant beverage.126 But what can companies do to improve employees’ moods? Managers can use humor and give their employees small tokens of appreciation for work well done. Also, when leaders themselves are in good moods, group members are more positive; as a result, they cooperate better.127 But what about when leaders are sad? A recent study on emotional contagion found that leader displays of sadness increase the analytic performance of followers, perhaps because leaders are less engaged with them when sad. However, this study also indicated that leaders are perceived as more effective when they share positive emotions, and followers are more creative in a positive emotional environment.128

Selecting positive team members can have a contagion effect because positive moods transmit from team member to team member. One study of professional cricket teams found players’ happy moods affected the moods of their team members and positively influenced their performance.129 It makes sense, then, for managers to select team members predisposed to positive moods.

Summary

Emotions and moods are similar in that both are affective in nature. But they’re also different—moods are more general and less contextual than emotions. And events do matter. The time of day and day of the week, stressful events, social activities, and sleep patterns are some of the factors that influence emotions and moods. Emotions and moods have proven relevant for virtually every OB topic we study, and they have implications for managerial practice.