L9 Emotion Function

Question 1

What did emotion used to be studied in terms of?

Answer 1

It used to be studied in terms of outcomes e.g. work stress

Question 2

What does more recent research focus on?

Answer 2

The dynamic elements of emotion like how they influence day to day work performance, organisational dynamics, team spirit, organisational identity and job processes

Question 3

What are the different emotions experienced within a typical workplace?

Answer 3

Jealousy, stress, pride, sadness, anger, love, disgust etc.

Sometimes emotion can be written into the job role e.g. flight attendants, funeral directors, bouncer

Question 4

What is emotional labour?

Answer 4

Introduced by Hochschild (1983)
Act of displaying appropriate emotions in exchange for a wage
The effort, planning and control needed to express organisationally desired emotion during interpersonal transactions

Question 5

What are display rules?

Answer 5

Emotions employees are expected to display
Are a function of societal, occupational and organisational norms
Can be implicit or explicit

Question 6

How can EL be accomplished?

Answer 6

By 2 main methods:

1. Surface acting - employee displays but doesn’t experience the emotion
2. Deep acting - employee displays and experiences the emotion. This can be achieved by invoking thoughts and images congruent with the emotion likely to lead to a more authentic display

Question 7

What are the potential positive consequences of EL for organisations?

Answer 7

Immediate gains e.g. sales
Encore gains e.g. repeat business
Contagion gains e.g. word of mouth

Question 8

What are the potential positive consequences of EL for employees?

Answer 8

Performance e.g. tips
Physical and mental well being

Can lead to personal accomplishment or to emotional exhaustion

Question 9

What did a meta-analysis looking at the effects of EL find (Hilsheger & Schewe, 2011)?

Answer 9

Surface acting has a negative relationship with well-being and a weak negative relationship with performance
Deep acting has no relationship with well-being but a positive relationship with emotional performance and customer satisfaction

Question 10

When are adverse effects more likely?

Answer 10

When there is a mismatch between the displayed and felt emotion and display rules (emotional deviance)
It can be serious if the rules have been internalised e.g. a nurse who can’t express empathy due to burnout

Question 11

When does dissonance occur?

Answer 11

When expressed emotions satisfy display rules but they clash with actual feelings
Can sometimes help the employee remain professionally detached but may also cause personal estrangement

Question 12

Why should social identity theory be considered?

Answer 12

Employees who identify with their role with feel more authentic in complying with the display rules
But will suffer more if the organisation fails or if they cannot fulfil the demands

Question 13

Why should the social interaction model be considered?

Answer 13

Personal outcome may depend on the response of the customer/client
So need positive feedback to see benefits

Question 14

How are work-home issues involved?

Answer 14

Role overload may occur when emotion management is high at work and at home
Role conflict may occur when emotion norms differ at work and at home

Question 15

What are some potential methods for managing EL?

Answer 15

Training, feedback, rewards, stories, socialisation, scripts

Question 16

Why does EL raise ethical and practical issues?

Answer 16

Do organisations have the right to govern what emotion employees feel and express at work?
How successful are they?
Been argued that formalised display expectations should be replaced by more humanistic practices which value the employee

Question 17

What did Parkinson’s (1991) study of hairdressers find?

Answer 17

Interviewed women on youth training scheme
Employees were encouraged to project authentic pleasant hospitality, must adjust to the emotional role
Hairdressers who didn’t deceive had a higher job satisfaction score and well being
The extent to which they displayed openness accounted for half the variance in tips
Salons may actually select hairdressers on the basis of expressiveness as expressiveness is harder to train, openness improves more over time

Question 18

What did Sutton (1991) find whilst working along side debt collectors?

Answer 18

They used more experienced collectors with more delinquent debtors
Collectors were selected, socialised and rewarded for:
- Conveying urgency (high arousal and hint or irritation) and for using contingent emotional expression

Question 19

What were the contingent strategies the debt collectors used?

Answer 19

Warm towards anxious debtors and calm to angry debtors as they were over-aroused and couldn’t focus on the debt
Irritated/angry towards indifferent/friendly/sad debtors as they were under aroused

Question 20

Was there dissonance amongst the debt collectors?

Answer 20

Their emotions matched the display rules when debtors are anxious or indifferent but there is a clash when debtors are friendly, sad or angry

Question 21

How were they taught to cope with the dissonance?

Answer 21

Detachment - think of them as a bill you have to pay
Appraisal - remind self that they aren’t mad at you
Release feelings outside the call

Question 22

What is Affective Events Theory (Weiss et al., 1996)?

Answer 22

A theoretical account of causes, consequences and structure of affective experience at work
Events at work were seen as causes of affective experiences - these directly affect some behaviours and indirectly affect others via influence on attitudes

Question 23

What framework did Totterdell and Niven (2014) come up with?

Answer 23

Framework for looking at affective events theory
Characteristics of the work environment give rise tho these work events e.g. job demands, social environment
Emotional responses are affected by personal characteristics and emotion regulation abilities
This can affect attitudes, cognitive performance, behaviour and citizenship at work
It can also affect other’s emotions due to emotion contagion

Question 24

What is flow?

Answer 24

A pleasurable state that occurs when faced with a challenge but you have the skills to meet it
May lose track of time in this state
Get a sense of satisfaction
People’s quality of experience of being in a condition of flow is usually more affected by whether they are at home or work

Question 25

How has the flow model been extended?

Answer 25

Been extended to other feelings

E.g. anxiety could be seen as skills < high challenge

Question 26

When can boredom be seen in the workplace?

Answer 26

In monotonous jobs such as air traffic control

Question 27

What can boredom lead to?

Answer 27

Attention lapses, sleeping on the job, accidents, slower responses, more risk taking, more absenteeism and more dissatisfaction

Question 28

What are task effects on boredom?

Answer 28

Under-load, lack of variability, overload

Question 29

What are person effects of boredom?

Answer 29

Schema complexity, current concerns

Extroverts are more vulnerable

Question 30

How might the work environment cause boredom?

Answer 30

Level of co-worker stimulation and work procedures

Question 31

What are some solutions to boredom?

Answer 31

Goal-setting, refocusing attention, reducing concerns, increasing stimulation, varying pace and type of activity

Question 32

What are the effects of positive moods at work?

Answer 32

Enhanced job performance, reduced absenteeism, better customer service

Question 33

What is the Dual-tuning model (George, 2011)?

Answer 33

Both positive and negative moods are functional and adaptive

Negative moods can signal that something is wrong that needs attention

Question 34

What is emotional intelligence (EI)?

Answer 34

EI incorporates personal and social intelligence
Has 3 domains:
1. Appraisal and expression of emotions (in self and others)
2. Regulation of emotions (in self and others)
3. Utilisation of emotions to solve problems

Question 35

How can you measure EI?

Answer 35

Self-report
Independent ratings of competencies
Ability tests (scored by consensus)

Question 36

Why is EI important?

Answer 36

People need to be able to deal with their own emotions as well as others
EI appears to make the biggest difference to success in technical jobs because employees are largely selected for cognitive skills so social skills will be seen as a bonus

Question 37

What are the ethics surrounding EI?

Answer 37

Should people be selected for jobs based on EI?

Or trained for it? EI develops over time so may be trainable