INDIVIDUAL

EMOTIONS AND MOODS

Chapter 04
Emotion free Organization??
 Initially organizations give little or no attention to emotions.
 Don’t allow to express: Frustration, Fear, Anger, Love, Hate, Joy, Grief.

 Emotions of any kind were disruptive:

 Like ANGER has impact on employee’s ability to work effectively.

 Certainly some emotions, particularly exhibited at the wrong time, can hinder
performance.
 They rarely viewed emotions as constructive or contributing factor toward
performance.
 Emotions are inseparable part of everyday life. [You can’t leave emotions at home]

Emotion-free organizations are not possible.

Emotions
What Are Emotions and Moods?
 Three terms are closely intertwined Affect, Emotions, and Mood.
 Affect is generic that covers broad range of feelings people experience including both emotion
and mood.
 EMOTIONS: Intense feelings directed at someone or something.
 MOODS: Less intense feelings than emotions and often (though no always) arise without a
specific event acting as a stimulus.

 For Example: If someone is rude to you

Intense feelings probably comes

and goes fairly quickly, may be
even in matter of seconds.

 But when you are in bad mood: You can feel bad for several hours.
 Bad moods can make more emotional in response to event.
 If you’re in good mood  You see world as Heaven (Paradise)
The Basic Emotions

How many emotions are there?

 There are dozens i.e. anger, contempt, enthusiasm, envy, fear, frustration,
disappointment, embarrassment, disgust, happiness, hate, hope, jealousy, joy,
love, pride, surprise, and sadness.
 Some researchers or even philosophers say there are universal emotions
common to all.
 But René Descartes, founder of modern philosophy identified emotions:
 Wonder, Love, Hatred, Desire, Joy and Sadness.
 All others are composed of some of these six emotions.

 Psychologists tried to identify basic emotions by studying facial expressions.

 One problem is that some emotions are too complex to be easily represented on our
face.
 Many think love as the most universal of all emotions.
 But not easy to express through only a facial expression.
Cultures Also Govern Emotions

 Some facial expressions can easily be recognized across the cultures but
some are unique in nature and identified by few people.
Degree of Emotion  Defines the expression.
Emotions across culture

 In USA and other western countries recognize smile as indicating

happiness, BUT in the Middle East (Iran, SA, Turkey, Egypt etc) is likely to
seen as a sign of attraction.
 So women learned not to smile at men.

 Serious German shoppers have reportedly been turned off by the

Walmart’s friendly greeters and helpful staff.
 And nowadays, companies offer Anger-Management programs to teach
people to contain or even hide their inner feelings.
The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affect
 One way to classify emotions is whether they are positive or negative.
Positive Emotions: Express a favorable evaluation or feeling—such as joy and gratitude.
Negative Emotions: Express the unfavorable feeling—such as anger or guilt.
Remember: Emotions can't be neutral
 When we group our emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood
states because we are looking at them more generally instead of in isolation.
The Functions of Emotions

Do Emotions Make Us Irrational?

 The Famous astronomer once wrote: “Where we have strong emotion, we’re liable to
fool ourselves”
 The rationality and emotion are in conflict, and that if you exhibit emotion you’re likely
to act irrationally.
 Few researchers believe emotions also help us to understand the world around us.
 We must have ability to experience emotions to be rational.
 Key to good decision making is: Employ thinking and feeling in your decisions.
Do Emotions Make Us Ethical?

 Initially high order cognitive processes are required for ethical decision
making.

 Sympathy for the suffering of others, guilt about our own immoral
behavior, anger about injustice done to others, contempt for those who
behave unethically etc.
Source of Emotions and Moods

1. Personality: Emotions have trait component, most people have built-in tendencies
to experience certain moods and emotions more frequently than others.
For Example: Harabhajan Singh and MS Dhoni.
 One is easily provoked and while other is calm and relatively unemotional.

2. Day of the Week and Time of the Day:

 People tend to experience different mood during week.
3. Weather:
 50 degree and sunny weather.
 Too cold and rainy day.

Researchers
Suggested that weather has little effect on moods.
4. Stress: Impending (awaiting) deadline, the loss of big sale, a reprimand from the
boss.
5. Social Activities: Do you tend to be happiest when out with friends?
 Improves positive mood and have little effect on negative mood.

Do people in positive mood seek out social interactions

or
Social interactions cause people to be in good moods?
Both are true.
6. Sleep
 Sleep quality does affect mood. (Less attention at work)

7. Exercise: “Sweat Therapy”

 Exercise help people to enhance their positive mood.

8. Age: Do young people experience more extreme positive emotions than older
people?
 One study suggest than negative emotions seem to occur less as people get older.
 As we get older we experience wide variety of emotions.
 Stability comes with emotional exposure.

9. Sex: Many believe that women are more emotional than men?
 Evidence confirms that “Women are more emotionally expressive than men”. They display more
frequent expressions of both positive or negative emotions, except anger.
Emotional Labor
 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 are days when you didn’t feel cheerful, you knew management
expected you to be upbeat when dealing with customers. So you fake it!

 Emotional Labor:
 A situation in which an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions.
 Regulate emotions as work demand. Happy face while dealing with customers.

 This concept emerged from service jobs:

 Airlines expect their attendants to be cheerful.
 Expect Funeral Directors to be sad.
 Doctors to be emotionally neutral.
Emotional Labor is relevant to almost every job

 Your manager expect you to be courteous (polite) not hostile in your interactions
with co-workers.
 True challenge arises when employee have to project one emotion while feeling
another. [This disparity is called Emotional Dissonance]
 Bottled-up feelings of frustration, anger, and resentment can eventually lead to
Emotional Exhaustion and Burn out.
Felt Emotions Vs. Displayed Emotions

Felt Emotions: Individuals actual emotions are shown

 If you feeling angry, sad, happy or other.

Displayed Emotions: Emotions that organization require workers to show

and consider appropriate in a given job.
 They are not innate, they’re learned.

For Example:
 Society expect from us to be sad at funerals weather we consider the person’s death
a loss or not.
 Appear happy at weddings even if we don’t feel like celebrating.

 In organization:
 Manager has learned to be serious while giving Negative Performance Evaluation
 And hide their emotions of anger while announcing someone’s promotion.
Types of Emotional Labor

1. Surface Acting: [Based on displayed emotion]

 Hiding inner feelings and forgoing emotional expression in response to display
rules.
 i.e. A worker who smiles at customer even when he doesn’t feel like.

2. Deep Acting: [Deals with Felt Emotions]

 Try to modify our true inner feelings based on display rules.
 i.e. A health care provider trying to genuinely feel more empathy for his/her patient.

Which type of Labor will be more stressful ?

 Surface acting is more stressful to employees because it entails denying their true
emotions.
 Employees who engage in such behavior must have chance to relax and recharge.
Work environment includes everything surrounding the job:
 The variety of tasks and degree of autonomy, job demands, and requirements for
expressing emotional labor.

Environment creates work events that can be hassles, uplifting events or both.
 i.e Hassles are colleagues who refuse to carry their share of work, two chain of command, excessive time pressures
 Up lifting events i.e meeting a goal, getting a support form a colleague and receiving recognition for an achievement.
Emotional Intelligence

 Emotional Intelligence—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.

 People who know there emotions and are good at reading emotional cues—for
instance, knowing why they’re angry and how to express themselves without violating
norms—are effective.
The Cause for EI (Emotional Intelligence)

1. Institutive Appeal It is good to posses social intelligence. Intuition suggest people

who can detect emotions in others, control their emotions, and handle social
interactions.
2. EI Predicts Criteria That Matter High level of EI mean person will perform well
on the job. EI predicts the performance of employees.
3. EI is Biologically Based EI is also genetically influenced.

Social Intelligence (SI) is the ability to get along well with others, and to get them to
cooperate with you.
The Case Against EI

1. EI Researchers Do Not Agree on Definitions Some researchers focus on

emotional intelligence via test with right and wrong answers, scoring ability to
recognize and control emotions.
 Ability-based perspective (scoring ability)
 Others focus on emotional intelligence as a broad variety of construct.

2. EI Can’t Be Measured Many critics has 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.
 Although the validity of some questions is doubtful.
 One measure ask you to associate feelings with colors
 I am good at reading other people. [Have no right or wrong answer]
 Self Esteem [Confidence]

3. EI is Nothing but Personality with a Different Label EI is closely related to

intelligence and personality, once you control for these factors, it has nothing unique
to offer.
Emotion Regulation
 The central idea behind emotion regulation is to identify and modify the
emotions you feel.
 Strategies to Change Emotions
 Thinking about pleasant things (past or future)
 Suppressing negative thoughts
 Distracting your self (engage in other activities)
 Reappraising the situation (Revisiting the situation will lessen the impact of particular emotion)
[Second thought]
 Engaging in relaxation techniques.
 Not everyone is equally good at regulating their emotions.
 Individual 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.
 People who have lower levels of self esteem are also less likely to try to improve their sad
moods.

 Changing your emotions takes effort, and effort can be exhausting.

 Some times to change an emotion actually make the emotion more stronger.
 i.e Try to talk yourself out of being afraid can make you focus more on what scares you  which
makes you more afraid.

Neuroticism: Tend to feel dissatisfied with themselves and their lives. Depressed, anxiety, anger and guilt.
OB Applications of Emotions and Moods
 Selection:
 The job that require high degree of social interaction.
 Employers used to measure EI to hire people.

 Decision Making:
 Mood and emotion have important effects on DM.
 People in good mood experiencing positive emotions are more likely to use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to
make decisions.
 Positive people find better solutions to problems.
 Negative emotions, depressed people are slower at processing information. [Search for perfect solution but
time matters]

 Creativity:
 People in good moods tend to be more creative than people in bad moods.
 The produce more ideas and more options, and other thinks their ideas are original.
 Give a positive feedback to subordinates.

 Motivation:
 Employees feel better about themselves when they have positive emotions.
 Leadership:
 When leaders feel excited, enthusiastic, and active, they are more likely to energize their subordinates and covey
sense of efficacy, competence, optimism, and enjoyment.

 Negotiation:
 Negotiation is emotional process.
 Negotiator shows anger  It would lead to worse outcomes, if you’re not powerful party in negotiation.

 Customer Service:
 Positive emotions provide high quality of customer satisfaction.
 Emotional Contagion (Infectious) When employee shows positive emotions to customer, in repeat they also respond
positively.

 Job Attitudes:
 Negative emotions trigger job performance at workplace.

 Deviant Workplace Behavior:

 People behave in ways that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its member or both.
 Backstab other employees, negatively distort others’ success.

 Safety and Injury at Work:

 Bad moods can contribute to injury at work in several ways.
 A person who is always scared will be more pessimistic about the effectiveness and feel like s/he must just get hurt
any way.
How Managers can Influence Moods

1. Arrange employee gatherings

 Celebrate success of employees (Anniversaries. Birthdays, Project success, New employees)

2. Use of humor
3. Give a small token of appreciation for work well done.
4. Contagion Effect:
 Spread positive moods in team members by talking with them politely and show respect and have
concern for employees.
Chapter 04 Completed 