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a. Researchers analyzed millions of Twitter messages from individuals across the
globe.
1) Exhibit 4-3 shows positive affect increased after sunrise, tended to peak at
midmorning, remained stable until roughly 7 p.m., and then tended to increase
again until the midnight drop.
2. Day of the week
a. In most cultures, people are in better moods on the weekend.
b. Exhibit 4-4 shows that this is true in several cultures.
3. Weather
a. Weather has little effect on mood.
b. Illusory correlation occurs when people associate two events, but in reality, there
is no connection.
4. Stress
a. Stress can be cumulative and does affect mood and emotional states.
5. Social activities
a. Social activities tend to increase positive mood.
b. People who are in positive moods seek out social activities.
c. The type of social activity matters – activities that are physical, informal, or
epicurean are more strongly associated with increases in positive mood.
6. Sleep
a. A large portion of the U.S. workforce suffers from sleep deprivation.
b. Sleep quality affects mood.
c. Poor sleep also impairs job satisfaction because people that feel fatigue are
irritable and less alert.
7. Exercise
a. Exercise enhances peoples’ positive moods, but don’t expect miracles.
8. Age
a. Negative emotions seem to occur less as people get older.
9. Sex
a. Women show greater emotional expression than men, experience emotions more
intensely, and display more frequent expressions of both positive and negative
emotions.
b. 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.
II. Emotional Labor
A. Introduction
1. Emotional labor is an employee’s expression of organizationally desired emotions
during interpersonal transactions at work.
2. The concept emerged from studies of service jobs.
B. Felt Versus Displayed Emotions
1. Separate emotions into felt (an individual’s actual emotions) and displayed (those
that the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given
job).
2. Displaying fake emotions requires us to suppress real ones.
a. Surface acting is hiding inner feelings and hiding emotional expressions in
response to display rules.
b. Deep acting is trying to modify our true inner feelings based on display rules.
3. 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.
III. Affective Events Theory
A. 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.
1. Employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work and this
influences job performance and satisfaction.
2. Work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions.
3. The events-reaction relationship is moderated by the employee’s personality and
mood.
4. A person’s emotional response to a given event can change depending on his or her
mood.
5. Emotions influence a number of performance and satisfaction variables such as OCB,
organizational commitment, turnover, and level of effort.
B. In summary, AET offers two important messages:
1. First, emotions provide valuable insights into how workplace hassles and uplifting
events influence employee performance and satisfaction.
2. Second, employees and managers shouldn’t ignore emotions or the events that cause
them, even when they appear minor, because they accumulate.
IV. Emotional Intelligence
A. Introduction
1. Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to:
a. Perceive emotions in the self and others.
b. Understand the meaning of these emotions.
c. Regulate one’s emotions accordingly in a cascading model, as shown in Exhibit
4-5.
2. Several studies suggest EI may play an important role in job performance.
a. One study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 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.
b. The students also de-emphasized the use of the more cognitive parts of their
brains.
3. EI has been a controversial concept in OB, with supporters and detractors.
B. Emotion Regulation
1. Emotion regulation, which is part of the EI literature, is increasingly being studied as
an independent concept.
2. The central ideal behind emotion regulation is to identify and modify the emotions
you feel.
C. Emotion Regulation Influences and Outcomes
1. As you might suspect, not everyone is equally good at regulating emotions.
2. 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.
3. The workplace environment has an effect on an individual’s tendency to employ
emotion regulation.
4. In general, diversity in work groups increases the likelihood that you will regulate
your emotions.
5. 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 possible; 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.
a. These findings suggest a beneficial outcome of diversity – it may cause us to
regulate our emotions more consciously and effectively.
6. Changing your emotions takes effort, and this effort can be exhausting.
7. 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.
D. Emotion Regulation Techniques
1. Researchers of emotion regulation often study the strategies people employ to
change their emotions.
a. One technique we have discussed in this chapter is surface acting, or literally
“putting on a face” of appropriate response to a given situation.
b. Surface acting doesn’t change the emotions, though, so the regulation effect is
minimal, and the result of daily surface acting leads to exhaustion and fewer
OCBs.
c. Deep acting, another technique we have covered, is less psychologically costly
than surface acting because the employee is actually trying to experience the
emotion. Emotion regulation through deep acting can have a positive impact on
work outcomes.
E. Ethics of Emotion Regulation
1. One technique of emotion regulation is emotional suppression, or suppressing initial
emotional responses to situations.
a. This response seems to facilitate practical 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.
2. Thus, unless we’re truly in a crisis situation, acknowledging rather than suppressing
our emotional responses to situations, and re-evaluating events after they occur,
yields the best outcomes.
3. Cognitive reappraisal, or reframing our outlook on an emotional situation, is one
way to effectively regulate emotions.
a. This result suggests that cognitive reappraisal may allow people to change their
emotional responses, even when the subject matter is as highly emotionally
charged as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
4. Another technique with potential for emotion regulation is social sharing, or
venting.
5. Research shows that the open expression of emotions can help individuals to
regulate their emotions, as opposed to keeping emotions “bottled up.”
6. 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.
7. While emotion regulation techniques can help us cope with difficult workplace
situations, research indicates that the effect varies.
8. Thus, 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.
F. Ethics of Emotion Regulation
1. Emotion regulation has important ethical implications. Some people might argue
that controlling your emotions is unethical because it requires a degree of acting.
2. Recent research has found that acting like you are in a good mood might put you in a
good mood.
V. OB Applications of Emotions and Moods
A. Selection
1. One implication from the evidence on EI to date is that employers should consider it a
factor in hiring employees, especially in jobs that demand a high degree of social
interaction.
2. More employers are starting to use EI measures to hire people.
B. Decision Making
1. Traditional approaches to the study of decision making in organizations have
emphasized rationality.
2. But OB researchers are increasingly finding that moods and emotions have important
effects on decision making.
3. Positive emotions can increase problem solving and facilitate the integration of
information.
4. OB researchers continue to debate the role of negative emotions and moods in
decision making.
a. Recent research suggests that depressed people make poorer decisions.
C. Creativity
1. People in good moods tend to be more creative than people in bad moods.
2. But some researchers do not believe that a positive mood makes people more
creative.
a. They argue that when people are in positive moods, they may relax and not
engage in the critical thinking necessary for some forms of creativity.
D. Motivation
1. Several studies have highlighted the importance of moods and emotions on
motivation.
a. One study set two groups of people to solving word puzzles.
1) The first group saw a funny video clip, intended to put the subjects in a good
mood first.
2) The other group was not shown the clip and started working on the puzzles
right away.
3) The positive-mood group reported higher expectations of being able to solve
the puzzles, worked harder at them, and solved more puzzles as a result.
b. The second study found that giving people performance feedback—whether real
or fake—influenced their mood, which then influenced their motivation.
1) 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.
2) This positive feedback further reinforces the positive mood, which may make
people perform even better, and so on.
c. Another study looked at the moods of insurance sales agents in Taiwan.
1) Agents in a good mood were more helpful toward their coworkers and also
felt better about themselves.
2) These factors in turn led to superior performance in the form of higher sales
and better supervisor reports of performance.
E. Leadership
1. Effective leaders rely on emotional appeals to help convey their messages.
2. Transformational leaders recognize the effect emotion has on their followers and
often freely share their own emotions.
3. Corporate executives know emotional content is critical if employees are to buy into
their vision of the company’s future and accept change.
F. Negotiation
1. Displaying a negative emotion can be effective in negotiation, but feeling bad about
your performance appears to impair future negotiations.
G. Customer Service
1. Quality customer service makes demands on employees that can create emotional
dissonance.
a. Long-term emotional dissonance is a predictor of job burnout, declines in job
performance, and lower job satisfaction.
2. Emotional contagion is an important consideration.
H. Job Attitudes
1. 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.
2. People who have a stressful day at work also have trouble relaxing after they get off
work.
3. If you’ve had a bad day at work, your spouse is likely to have an unpleasant evening.
I. Deviant Workplace Behaviors
1. Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviors.
2. Employee deviance: voluntary actions that violate established norms and which
threaten the organization, its members, or both.
3. Many of these deviant behaviors can be traced to negative emotions. For example,
envy is an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for having something that
you do not, and which you strongly desire, and can lead to malicious deviant
behaviors.
J. Safety and Injury at Work
1. Employers might improve health and safety (and reduce costs) by ensuring that
workers aren’t engaged in potentially dangerous activities when they’re in a bad
mood.
2. Individuals in negative moods tend to be more anxious, which can make them less
able to cope effectively with hazards.
3. Negative moods also make people more distractible, and distractions can obviously
lead to careless behaviors.
K. How Managers Can Influence Moods
1. Managers can use humor and give their employees small tokens of appreciation for
work well done.
2. When leaders are in good moods, group members are more positive, and as a result,
they cooperate more.
3. Selecting positive team members can have a contagion effect as positive moods
transmit from team member to team member.
VI. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. 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.
B. 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.
C. Emotions and moods have proven relevant for virtually every OB topic we study, and
they have implications for managerial practice. Specific implications for managers are
below:
1. Recognize that emotions are a natural part of the workplace and good management
does not mean creating an emotion-free environment.
2. To foster effective decision making, creativity, and motivation in employees, look to
model positive emotions and moods as much as is authentically possible.
3. Provide positive feedback to increase the positivity of employees.
In the service sector, encourage positive displays of emotion, which make customers
feel more positive and thus, improve customer service interactions and negotiations.
3. In the service sector, encourage positive displays of emotion, which make customers
feel more positive and thus, improve customer service interactions and negotiations.
4. Understand the role of emotions and moods to significantly improve your ability to
explain and predict your coworkers’ and others’ behavior.
