Emotion function Flashcards
Why emotion at work is important to understand
Hersey(1932) - got 17 workers to use a ‘mood’ checklist 4x a day for one year
emotion has been mainly studied as an outcome of work eg. stress, job satisfaction, well being, climate
– only recently has there been research on emotion as:
1) determinants of job outcomes eg. performance
2) part of job processes eg. meetings
3) part of group dynamics eg. leadership, team spirit
4) part of organisational identity eg. image
5) part of job role eg. customer service
why does it matter?
- the expression, experience and management of emotion in the workplace has acute and chronic effects on the wellbeing of workers and has performance implications for workers and their organisations
emotion expression at work
- Hoschild (1983) study
- emotional labour
- display rules
- 2 methods to achieve emotional labour
consequences
effects + adverse effects
flight attendents : emotional expression is built into their job role
-emotional labour is:
- the act of displaying appropriate emotions in exchange for a wage
OR
- the effort, planning and control required to express organisationally desired emotion during interpersonal transations (Moms & Feldman, 1996)
display rules = refer to what emotions ought to be publicly expressed by employees as part of their role
- they are a function of societal, occupational and organisational norms (can be explicit eg. training OR implicit eg. just pick up how to act)
emotional labour accomplished by 2 methods:
1) surface acting - employee displays but doesn’t experience emotion (tend to be inauthentic/ fake)
2) deep acting - employee displays and experiences emotion by invoking thoughts and images congruent with the emotion (likely to be more authentic)
(3rd added recently = SPONTANEOUS = naturally expressed emotions expected)
consequences: Positive for organisations -immediate gains(eg. sales) -encore gains (eg.repeat business -contagion gain (eg word of mouth) Positive for employees: -performance(eg. tips) - physical and mental wellbeing
effects:
- can be mixed eg. personal accomplishments or emotional exhaustion
Hulsneger & Schewe(2011) showed:
- surface acting has negative relationship with well being and performance
- deep acting has no relationship with wellbeing but positive with emotional performance and customer satisfaction
(surface acting = more adverse effects - Totterdell & Holman, 2013)
Adverse effects:
-more likely when there is a mismatch between displayed and felt emotion and display rules:
DEVIANCE occurs when display rules are disregarded. Can be serious if the rules have been internalised eg. nurse who can’t express empathy due to burnout
DISSONANCE occurs when expressed emoitons satisfy display rules but clash with actual feelings. can sometimes help employees remain professionally detached but may also cause personal estrangement
other factors to consider in emotional labour (3)
1) social identity theory: employees who identify their role will feel more authentic in complying with display rules
BUT will suffer more if the organisation fails or if they cannot fulfil demands (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993
2) social interaction model: personal outcome may depend on response of customer/ client (Cote, 2005)
3) work-home issues:
- role overload may occur when emotion management is high at work and home
- role conflict may occur when emotion norms differ at work and home (Wharton & Erikson, 1993)
- changing between work and home = emotional exhaustion
managing emotional labour
-ethics?
-organisations have many potential methods for managing emotions eg. training, feedback, rewards, socialisation, stories, scripts
- raises ethical and practical issues
do organisations have the right to govern what emotions employees feel and express at work?
how successful are they? examples of withdrawal of labour (smile strike) and law suits (emotion script led to the harassment of female employees as men thought they were being hit on) - Grandey, Rupp & Brice (2015) argue that formalised display expectations should be replaced by more humanistic practices which value the employee
Research on emotional expression
1) hairdressers (Parkinson, 1991)
2) debt collection (Sutton, 1991)
1) Parkinson (1991)
- employees encouraged to:
project ‘authentic’ pleasant hospitality, which could result in tips/ return visits.
trainees must adjust to emotional role
- measures included:
impression management
openness
expressiveness
– found:
- absence of deceptive impression management was associate with higher job satisfaction
- openness and expressiveness accounted for half variance in tips
- expressiveness correlated with salon price (employees selected for expressiveness)
- openness, not expressiveness, improved over time (so, select for expressiveness as this is harder to improve)
2) Sutton (1991)
- used experienced collectors with more delinquent debtors
rationale: encounters with aversive person are unpleasant so people will pay
- collectors selected, socialised and rewarded for:
conveying urgency
for using contingent emotional expression
contingent strategies:
- display WARMTH to ANXIOUS debtors (as they are over aroused = can’t process info until calm)
- display IRRITATION/ ANGER to INDIFFERENT/ FRIENDLY/SAD debtors because they are underaroused
- display CALM to ANGRY debtors because they are too upset to focus on debt
collectors feelings:
- match required emotional display when debtors are anxious or indifferent
- clash with required emotional display when debtors are friendly/ sad/ angry
taught to cope with dissonance by:
-detachment
-appraisal
-releasing feelings outside of calls (eg. mute call and rant)
Emotional experience at work
affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996)
Totterdell and Niven
- things that give rise to events at work?
- consequences?
theoretical account of causes, consequences and structures of affective experiences at work
- events at work are seen as causes of affective experience
- affective experiences directly affect some behaviours and indirectly affect others via their influences on attitudes (eg. job satisfaction)
- concerned with how emotions unfold over time (temporal dimension to theory)
Totterdell & Niven (2014)- certain things give rise to events at work
1) characteristics of worker: (trait affectivity & emotion regulation)
2) characteristics of work environment (work activities, job demands, physical environment, social environment)
- -> lead to discrete emotions at work eg.
- phenomenological feeling
- physiological activation
- action tendency
- cognitive appraisal
- external expression
- -> consequences of these feelings:
1) attitudes (liking of co workers, job satisfaction)
2) cognitive performance (attention, decision making)
3) behaviour (job performance, withdrawal, citizenship & counter-productive behaviours)
4) social consequence (emotions/ attitudes/ behaviours of others)
Flow
- looking at youth training scheme found?
pleasurable state that arises when people use high skills to meet a high challenge
- absorbing and often accompanied by loss of passage of time
- people’s quality of experience usually more affected by whether they are at home or at work (Csikszentmihayi & LeFevre, 1989)
- skill/challenge model has been extended to other feelings:
- arousal: skills > high challenge
- flow : skill = high challenge
- anxiety: skill < high challenge
- control: skill > moderate challenge
Haworth & Evans (1995) found that flow was associated with enjoyment and interest in youth training scheme trainees
However, if skills exceeded low challenges =enjoyment, happiness & relaxation
-can intervene to produce pleasant states by manipulating demands (challenge) of tasks and/or by helping people obtain the skills they need
boredom
can lead to?
task effects include?
person effects include?
environmental factors include?
solutions include?
= an unpleasant transient affective state in which an individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity (Fisher, 1993)
showed that:
- 11-56% found their job intrinsically boring
- 79-87% found their job boring some of the time
can lead to:
- attentional lapses
- sleeping on the job
- slower responses
- accidents
- risk taking
- increased drug/ alcohol consumption
- dissatisfaction
- absenteeism
task effects include:
- underload
- lack of variability (monotony)
- overload (v difficult task)
person effects include:
- schema complexity (understanding of info from previous knowledge/ context)
- current concerns
- extroverts more vulnerable
environmental factors include:
- co-worker stimulation
- work procedures
solutions include:
- goal setting
- refocusing attention
- reducing concerns
- increasing stimulation (eg. music)
- varying pace and type of activity
mood
- positive mood at work causes? (3)
- dual tuning model?
affects behaviour by:
altering effort + persistence on tasks (George and Bried, 1996)
positive mood at work:
- enhanced job performance (Staw & Barsade, 1993)
- reduced absenteeism (George, 1989)
- better customer service (George, 1991; Pugh, 2001)
dual tuning model:
- both positive and negative moods are functional and adaptive and should be considered in tandem
- negative moods (+emotions) can also sometimes have positive performance effects because they signal that something is going wrong that needs attentions eg. in jobs that require creativity (George & Zhou, 2002)
Managing emotion at work
emotional intelligence (EI)
- 3 domains?
- measures of EI?
multiple different intelligences eg. spatial/ verbal/ logical
EI = personal and social intelligence (Goleman)
scripts/training could be used
3 domains of EI:
1) appraisal and expression of emotion(in self and others)
2) regulation of emotions (in self and others)
3) utilization of emotions to solve problems
measures of EI
- self-report (including measures of components)
- independent ratings of competencies (get team to rate abilities - dependent on how well they know you and how well they can rate ability)
- ability tests (scored by consensus - your score compared against consensus score - there is a certain amount of subjectivity in this)
(In ability test you have to choose appropriate solution for certain scenarios)
emotional intelligence at work
why is it important at work?
- people need to be able to deal with their own emotions an the emotions of others at work
- 80% of competencies that distinguish superior from average performers at work depend on EI rather than cognitive ability (Goleman, 1998)
- EI appears to make the biggest difference to success in technical jobs because employees largely selected for cognitive (not social) skills
- Sternberg: the IQ of a group (eg. work team) depends on the maintenance of internal harmony in the group = requires EI
ethics:
- should people be selected for EI?
OR trained for it? EI develops over time = may be trainable
- psychometric status of EI has been questioned
overlap with personality traits and general ability –> its meaning has been stretched - some evidence in meta analyses that EI predicts job performance (Joseph et al, 2015)
- studies f its components are also worth pursuing
effectiveness of specific mood regulation strategies at work (Totterdel & Parkinson, 1999) - interpersonal emotion regulation at work (troth et al, 2017)
