EMOTIONS &

MOODS
Chapter 4
 What Are Affect, Emotions &
Moods
Affect: A broad range of feelings that people
experience.

Affect refers to the outward expression of

emotions through facial expressions, body
language, tone of voice, and other nonverbal
cues
Emotions: Intense feelings that are directed at
someone or something.
• arises in response to internal or external stimuli.
• Emotions typically involve a combination of
physiological arousal, subjective feelings,
cognitive appraisal, and behavioral responses.
• Examples of emotions include happiness,
sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.
• Moods: Feelings that tend to be less intense
than emotions and that lack a contextual
stimulus
• is not necessarily tied to a specific trigger or
event.
• Moods are longer-lasting than emotions and
can persist for hours, days, or even weeks.
While emotions are often intense and focused,
moods are more diffuse and can color an
individual's overall outlook and perception of the
world.
 The Basic Emotion
• There are dozens, including anger, contempt,
enthusiasm, envy, fear, frustration, disappointment,
embarrassment, disgust, happiness, hate, hope,
jealousy, joy, love, pride, surprise, and sadness

• Other scholars 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.
• Facial expressions have proved difficult to
interpret.
• One problem is that some emotions are
too complex to be easily represented on
our faces
• Secondly, recent study suggested that
people do not interpret emotions from
vocalizations (such as sighs or screams)
the same way across cultures
• For example, Himba participants (from
northwestern Namibia) did not agree with
Western participants that crying meant
sadness or a growl meant anger
• the way we experience an emotion isn’t
always the same as the way we show it
• moral emotions; emotions that have moral
implications because of our instant judgment of
the situation that evokes them.
• Examples of moral emotions include sympathy
for the suffering of others, guilt about our own
immoral behavior, anger about injustice done to
others, and contempt for those who behave
unethically
 The Basic Moods
• Positive and Negative
• 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
• positive affect A mood dimension that
consists of specific positive emotions such
as excitement, enthusiasm, and elation at
the high end.
• negative affect A mood dimension that
consists of emotions such as nervousness,
stress, and anxiety at the high e
 Experiencing Moods and Emotions

• positivity offset The tendency of most individuals

to experience a mildly positive mood at zero input
(when nothing in particular is going on)
• one study of customer-service representatives in a
British call center revealed that people reported
experiencing positive moods 58 percent of the time
despite the stressful environment
• Another research finding is that negative
emotions lead to negative moods. Perhaps
this happens because people think about
events that created strong negative
emotions five times as long as they do
about events that created strong positive
ones
• Chinese consider negative emotions—while not
always pleasant—as potentially more useful and
constructive than do people in the United States

• The Chinese may be right: Research has

suggested that negative affect can have benefits.
Visualizing the worst-case scenario often allows
people to accept present circumstances and cope,
for instance.19 Negative affect may also allow
managers to think more critically and fairly.
 The Function of Emotions
• happy employees demonstrate higher
performance and organizational
citizenship behavior (OCB), fewer CWBs,
and less turnover, particularly when they
feel supported by their organizations in
their effort to do well in their jobs

• Irrationality and Ethicality

Do emotions make us irrational?
How often have you heard someone say,
“Oh, you’re just being emotional”?
The perceived association between the two
is so strong that some researchers argue
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
• This perspective suggests the
demonstration or even experience of
emotions can make us seem weak, brittle,
or irrational. However,
this is wrong.
• Do emotions make us ethical?
our emotions provide important information
about how we understand the world around
us and they help guide our behaviors. For
instance, individuals in a negative mood may
be better able to discern truthful from accurate
information than are people in a happy mood
• Do emotions make us ethical?
Numerous studies suggest that moral judgments
are largely based on feelings rather than on
cognition, even though we tend to see our moral
boundaries as logical and reasonable, not as
emotional.
We also tend to judge outgroup members (anyone
who is not in our group) more harshly for moral
misbehaviors than ingroup members, even when
we are trying to be objective
Sources of Emotions and
Moods
Personality
Moods and emotions have a personality trait
component, meaning that some people have built-
in tendencies to experience certain moods and
emotions more frequently than others do.
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
Time of Day
Moods vary by the time of day. However, research
suggests most of us actually follow the same
pattern. 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

most research suggests that positive affect tends

to drop after 7 p.m., this study suggests that it
increases before the midnight decline
Day of the
Week
Are people in
their best moods
on the
weekends?
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?
illusory correlation The tendency of people
to associate two events when in reality there
is no connection.
Stress
Mounting levels of stress can worsen our moods,
as we experience more negative emotions.
Social Activities
Do you tend to be happiest when out with friends?
For most people, social activities increase a
positive mood and have little effect on a negative
mood. But do people in positive moods seek out
social interactions, or do social interactions cause
people to be in good moods?
Sleep
Sleep quality affects moods and decision making, and
increased fatigue puts workers at risk of disease, injury,
and depression. Poor or reduced sleep also makes it
difficult to control emotions
Exercise exercise enhances peoples’ positive
moods
Age One study of people ages 18 to 94 revealed that
negative emotions occur less as people get older. Periods
of highly positive moods lasted longer for the study’s older
participants, and bad moods faded more quickly
Sex
Many believe women are more emotional
than men. Is there any truth to this?
Evidence does confirm women experience
emotions more intensely, tend to “hold onto”
emotions longer than men, and display more
frequent expressions of both positive and
negative emotions, except anger
 EMOTIONAL LABOR
Emotional labor A situation in which an employee
expresses organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal transactions at work

We expect flight attendants to be cheerful, funeral

directors to be sad, and doctors emotionally neutral

your managers expect you to be courteous, not

hostile, in your interactions with coworkers
• The way we experience an emotion is
obviously not always the same as the way
we show it.
• Felt emotions An individual’s actual
emotions.
• Displayed emotions Emotions that are
organizationally required and considered
appropriate in a given job.
• When employees have to project one
emotion while feeling another, this
disparity is called emotional dissonance.
• Bottled-up feelings of frustration, anger,
and resentment can lead to emotional
exhaustion. Long-term emotional
dissonance is a predictor for job burnout,
declines in job performance, and lower job
satisfaction
 Affective events theory (AET)
• proposes that employees react emotionally to things that
happen to them at work, and this reaction influences
their job performance and satisfaction.
• Say you just found out your company is downsizing. You
might experience a variety of negative emotions, causing
you to worry that you’ll lose your job. Because it is out of
your hands, you feel insecure and fearful, and spend
much of your time worrying rather than working.
Needless to say, your job satisfaction will also be down
AET offers two important messages.
• First, emotions provide valuable insights
into how workplace 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 (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 his or her own emotions
accordingly
 Emotion Regulation
• 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
• Therefore, in our study of OB, we are
interested in whether and how emotion
regulation should be used in the workplace.
 emotion regulation influences
and outcomes
• 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
 Emotion regulation Techniques
• One technique is surface acting, or literally
“putting on a face” of appropriate response to a
given situation.
• Surface acting involves faking the required
emotions
• Surface acting doesn’t change the emotions,
though, so the regulation effect is minimum
• Deep acting, another technique , 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.

• For example, a recent study in the Netherlands and

Germany found that individuals in service jobs
earned significantly more direct pay (tips) after they
received training in deep acting
• One technique of emotion regulation is emotional
suppression, or suppressing initial emotional
responses to situations
• A portfolio manager might suppress an emotional
reaction to a sudden drop in the value of a stock and
therefore be able to clearly decide how to plan.
Suppression used in crisis situations appears to
help an individual recover from the event
emotionally, while suppression used as an everyday
emotion regulation technique can take a toll on
mental ability, emotional ability, health, and
relationships
• cognitive reappraisal, or reframing our
outlook on an emotional situation, is one
way to effectively regulate emo tions.
Cognitive reappraisal ability seems to be
the most helpful to individuals in situations
where they cannot control the sources of
stress
• Another technique with potential for emotion
regulation is social sharing, or venting.
• Research shows that the open expression of
emotions can help individuals to regulate their
emotions, as opposed to keeping emotions “bottled
up.”
• 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.
• Caution must be exercised, though, because
expressing your frustration affects other people
 OB Applications of Emotions
and Moods
• Selection
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.
• Decision Making
• positive emotions and moods seem to help people make
sound decisions.
• Positive emotions also enhance problem-solving skills, so
positive people find better solutions
• individuals in a negative mood may take higher risks than
when in a positive mood
Creativity
there are two schools of thought on the relationship.
Much research suggests that people in good moods
tend to be more creative than people in bad moods

Some researchers, however, 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 don’t need to
think of new ideas”) and not engage in the critical
thinking necessary for some forms of creativity.
Motivation
Agents in a good mood were found to be
more helpful toward their coworkers 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
Leaders are perceived as more effective when they
share positive emotions, and followers are more creative
in a positive emotional environment. What about when
leaders are sad? Research found that leader displays of
sadness increased the analytic performance of followers,
perhaps because followers attended more closely to
tasks to help the leaders
• Negotiation
Several studies suggest that a negotiator who feigns
anger has an advantage over an opponent

Displaying a negative emotion (such as anger) can be

effective, but feeling bad about your performance
appears to impair future negotiations

one study of people suggested that unemotional

people may be the best negotiators because they’re
not likely to overcorrect when faced with negative
outcomes
• Customer Service
When someone experiences positive emotions
and laughs and smiles at you, you tend to respond
positively. Of course, the opposite is true as well.
due to emotional contagion—the “catching” of
emotions from others
• Job Attitudes
“Never take your work home with you,”
it appears a positive mood at work can spill over to
your off-work hours, and a negative mood at work
can be restored to a positive mood after a break