LEARNING CONTENT: WEEK 5

Lesson Proper:
GENDER AND EMOTIONS
It's widely assumed that women are more "in touch" with their feelings
than men-that they react more emotionally and are better able to read
emotions in others. Is there any truth to these assumptions? 
The evidence does confirm differences between men and women when it
comes to emotional reactions and ability to read others. In contrasting the
genders, women show greater emotional expression than men; they experience
emotions more intensely, and they display more frequent expressions of both
positive and negative emotions, except anger. In contrast to men, women also
report more comfort in expressing emotions. Finally, women are better at
nonverbal and paralinguistic cues than are men.
One explanation is the different ways men and women have been
socialized. Men are taught to be tough and brave; and showing emotion is
inconsistent with this image. Women, on the other hand are friendlier than
men. For instance, women are expected to express more positive emotions on
the job (shown by smiling) than men, and they do. A second explanation is that
women may have more innate ability to read others and present their emotions
than do men. Third, women may have a greater need for social approval and,
thus, a higher propensity to show positive emotions such as happiness.
Reading Emotions 
Understanding another person's felt emotions is a very difficult task. But
we can learn to read others displayed emotions. We do this by focusing on
verbal, nonverbal, and paralinguistic cues.
The easiest way to find out what someone’s feeling is to ask them. Saying
something as simple as "Are you OK! What's the problem?" can frequently
provide you with the information to assess an individual's emotional state but
relying on a verbal response has two drawbacks:
 As we've noted previously, some people have difficulty understanding
their own emotions and hence, are un- able to verbally express them. So, at
best, verbal responses provide only partial information.
You're talking with a co-worker. Does the fact that his back is rigid, his
teeth clenched, and his facial muscles ought tell you something about his
emotional State? It probably should, facial expressions, gestures, body
movements, and physical distance are nonverbal cues that can provide
additional insights into what a person is feeling. Notice the difference in facial
features the height of the cheeks, the raising or lowering of the brow, the turn
of the mouth, the positioning of the lips. and the configuration of the muscles
around the eyes. Even something as subtle as the distance someone chooses to
position himself or herself from you can convey their feelings, or lack thereof, of
intimacy, ag aggressiveness, repugnance, or withdrawal.

Women show greater emotional expression than men and experience

emotions more intensely.
EXTERNAL CONSTRAINTS ON EMOTIONS
An emotion that is acceptable on the athletic playing field is acceptable
when exhibited at the workplace. Similarly, what's appropriate in a country is
often inappropriate in another. These facts illustrate the role that internal
constraints play shaping displayed emotions. Every organization defines
boundaries that identify what emotions are acceptable and the degree to which
they can be expressed. The same applies in the different cultures. In this
section, we look at organizational and cultural influences on emotions:
The foregoing examples illustrate the need to consider cultural factors as
inti fencing what is or isn't considered as emotionally appropriate. What's
acceptable in one culture may seem extremely unusual or even dysfunctional
in another. A cultures differ in terms of the interpretation they give to
emotions.
 There tends to be high agreement on what emotions mean within
cultures but not between. For instance, one study asked Americans to match
facial expressions with the six basic emotions. The range of agreement was
between 86 and 98 percent. When a group of Japanese was given the same
task, they correctly la beled only surprise (with 97 percent agreement). On the
other five emotions, their accuracy ranged from only 27 to 70 percent. In
addition, studies indicate that some cultures lack words for such standard
emotions as anxiety, depression, or guilt. Tahitians, as a case in point, don't
have a word directly equivalent to sad ness, When Tahitians are sad their peers
typically attribute their state to a physical illness.
OB APPLICATIONS
We conclude our discussion of emotions by considering their application
to several topics in OB. In this section, we assess how a knowledge of emotions
can help you to better understand the selection process in organizations,
decision making, motivation, leadership, interpersonal conflict, and deviant
workplace behaviors.
Ability and Selection
People who know their own emotions and are good at reading others'
emotions may be more effective in their jobs. That, in essence, is the theme
underlying recent research on emotional intelligence." 
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an assortment of non-cognitive skills,
capabilities, and competencies that Influence a person's ability to succeed
in coping with environmental demands and pressures. It's composed of
five dimensions:
 Several studies suggest El may play an important role in job
performance. For instance, one study looked at the characteristics of Bell Lab
engineers who were rated as stars by their peers. The scientists concluded that
stars were better at relating to others. That is, it was EI, not academic IQ, that
characterized high performers. A second study of Air Force recruiters generated
similar findings. Top performing recruiters exhibited high levels of El. Using
these findings, the Air Force revamped its selection criteria. A follow-up
investigation found that future hires who had high El scores were 2.6 times
more successful than those who didn't. A recent poll of human resource
managers asked: How important is it for your workers to demonstrate EI to
move up the corporate ladder? Forty percent replied "very important." Another
16 percent said "moderately important."
The implications from the initial evidence on El is that employers should
consider it as a factor in selection, especially in jobs that demand a high degree
of social interaction.
Decision Making
As you'll see in our next weekly lessons, traditional approach to the
study of decision making in organizations have emphasized rationality. They
have downplayed, or even ignored, the role of anxiety, fear, frustration, doubt,
happiness, excitement, and similar emotions. Yet it's naive to assume that
decision choices aren't influenced by one's feelings at a particular moment.
Given the same objective data, we should expect that people may make
different choices when they're angry and stressed out than when they're calm
and collected.
Negative emotions can result in a limited search for new alternatives and
a less vigilant use of information. On the other hand, positive emotions can
increase problem solving and facilitate the integration of information." You can
improve your understanding of decision making by considering "the heart" as
well as the head." People use emotions as well as rational and intuitive
processes in making decisions. Failure to incorporate emotions into the study
of decision processes will result in an incomplete (and often inaccurate) view of
the process.

-an assortment of non-cognitive skills, capabilities, and competencies

that influence a person's ability to succeed in coping with environmental
demands and pressures.
Motivation
We'll discuss motivation thoroughly in the next chapters. At this point,
we want to merely introduce the idea that, like decision making, the dominant
approaches to the study of motivation reflect an over rationalized view of
individuals.
Motivation theories basically propose that individuals are motivated to
the extent that their behavior is expected to lead to desired outcomes. The
image is that of rational exchange: the employee essentially trades effort for
pay, security, promotions, and so forth. But people aren't cold, unfeeling
machines. Their perceptions and calculations of situations are filled with
emotional content that significantly influences how much effort they exert.
Moreover, when you see people who are highly motivated in their jobs, they're
emotionally committed. People who are engaged in their work become
physically, cognitively, and emotionally immersed in the experience of activity,
in the pursuit of a goal.
Are all people emotionally engaged in their work? No! But many are. And if we
focus only on rational calculations of inducements and contributions, we fail to
be able to explain behaviors such as the individual who forgets to have dinner
and works late into the night, lost in the thrill of her work.
LEADERSHIP-The ability to lead others is a fundamental quality sought by
organizations. For this module, we briefly introduce how emotions can be an
integral part of leadership.
Effective leaders almost all rely on the expression of feelings to help
convey their messages. In fact, the expression of emotions in speeches is often
the critical clement that results in individuals accepting or rejecting a leader's
message. "When leaders feel excited, enthusiastic, and active, they may be
more likely to energize their subordinates and convey a sense of efficacy,
competence, optimism, and enjoyment. Politicians, as a case in point, have
learned to show enthusiasm when talking about their chances for winning an
election, even when polls suggest otherwise.
Corporate executives know that emotional content is critical if employees are to
buy into their vision of their company's future and accept change. When new
visions are offered, especially when contain distant or vague goals, change is
often difficult to accept. So when effective leaders want to implement significant
changes, they rely on the evocation, framing, and mobilization of notions." By
arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders increase
the likelihood that managers and employees alike will accept change. 
INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT
Few issues are more intertwined with emotions than the topic of interpersonal
conflict. Whenever conflicts arise, you can be fairly certain that emotions are
also surfacing. A manager's success in trying to resolve conflicts, in fact, is
often largely due to his or her ability to identify the emotional elements in the
conflict and to get the conflicting parties to work through their emotions. And
the manager who ignores the emotional elements in conflicts, focusing
singularly on rational and task concerns, is unlikely to be very effective in
resolving the conflicts.
DEVIANT WORKPLACE BEHAVIORS
Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviors.
Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes that people often
engage in voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten
the organization, its members, or both. These actions are called employee
deviance.
EMPLOYEE DEVIANCE
Voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the
organization, its members, or both. This fall into categories such as production
(e.g., leaving early, intentionally working slowly); property (c.8., stealing,
sabotage); political (eg. gossiping, blaming co-workers); and personal
aggression (e.g., sexual harass- mem, verbal abuse). Many of these deviant
behaviors can be traced to negative emotions. For instance, envy 
Envy - an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for loving something
that you don't, which you strongly desire. It can lead to mall serious deviant
behaviors. Envy, for example, has been found to be associated with hostility,
"backstabbing" and other forms of political behavior, negatively distort others’
successes, and positively distorting one's own accomplishments.
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS
PERSONALITY
A review of the personality literature offers general guidelines effective
job performance. As such, it can improve hiring, transfer, and promotion
decisions. Because personality characteristics create the parameters for
people behavior, they give us a framework for predicting behavior. For
example, individuals who are shy, introverted, and uncomfortable in
social situations would probably be ill-suited as salespeople. Individuals
who are submissive and conforming might not be effective as advertising
"idea" people.
Can we predict which high performers in sales, research, can lead people to
work on the basis of their personality characteristics alone? The answer is No.
Personality assessment should be used in conjunction with other in formation
as skills, abilities, and experience. But a knowledge of an individual's
personality can aid in reducing mismatches, which in turn, can lead to reduced
turnover and higher job satisfaction. 
We can look at certain personality characteristics that tend to be related to job
success, test for those traits, and use the data to make selection more effective.
A person who accepts rules, conformity, and dependence and rates high
authoritarianism is likely to feel more comfortable in, say, a structured
assembly line job, as an admittance clerk in a hospital, or as an administrator
in a large public agency than as a researcher or an employee whose job
requires a high degree of creativity.
EMOTIONS
Can managers control the emotions of their colleagues and employees?
No. Emotions are a natural part of an individual's makeup. Managers err if
they ignore the emotional elements in organizational behavior and assess
individual behavior if it were completely rational. As one consultant aptly
put it, "You can't divorce emotions from the workplace because you can't
divorce emotions from people. Managers who understand the role of
emotions will significantly improve their ability to explain and predict
individual behavior.
Do emotions affect job performance? Yes. They can hinder performance,
especially negative emotions. That's probably why organizations, for the most
part try to extract emotions out of the workplace. But emotions can also
enhance performance. How? Two ways:

So, for instance, the ability to effectively manage emotions in leadership and
sales positions may be critical to success in those positions.
What differentiates functional from dysfunctional emotions at work? While
there is no precise answer to this, it's been suggested that the critical
moderating variable is the complexity of the individual's task. The more
complex a task, the lower the level of arousal that can be tolerated
without interfering with performance.While a certain minimal level of
arousal is probably necessary for good performance, very high levels Interfere
with the ability to function, especially the job requires calculative and detailed
cognitive processes. Given that the trend is toward jobs becoming more
complex, you can see why organizations are like to go to considerable efforts to
discourage the overt display of emotions-especially intense ones-In the
workplace.
Traits are Powerful Predictors of Behavior
The essence of trait approaches in OB is that employee possesses stable
personality characteristics that significantly influence their attitudes toward,
and behavioral reactions to, organizational settings. People with particular
traits tend to be relatively consistent in their attitudes and behavior over time
and across situations. Of course, trait theorists recognize that all traits are not
equally powerful. They tend to put them into one of three categories:

Trait theorists do a fairly good job of meeting the average person's face-
validity test. Think of friends relatives, and acquaintances you have known for
a number of years. Do they have traits that have remained essentially stable
over time? Most of us would answer that question in the affirmative. If Cousin
Anne was shy and nervous when we last saw her 10 years ago, we would be
surprised to find her outgoing and relaxed now. Managers seem to have a
strong belief in the power of traits to predict behavior. If managers be lied that
situations determined behavior, they would hire people almost at random and
structure the situation properly, But the employee selection process in most
organizations places a great deal of emphasis on how applicants perform in
interviews and on tests. Assume you're an interviewer and ask yourself: What
am I looking for in job candidates? If you answered with terms such as
conscientious, hardworking persistent, confident and dependable, you're a trait
theorist!
Few people would dispute that there are some stable individual attributes that
affect react to the workplace But trait theorists go beyond that generosity and
argue that individual behavior consistencies are widespread and account for
much of the differences in behavior among. There are two important problems
with using traits to explain large proportion of behavior in organizations:
        First, organizational settings are strong situations that have a
large impact on employee be behavior.
         Second, individuals are highly adaptive and personality traits
change in response to organizational situations.                             
It has been well known for some time that the effects of traits are likely to be
strongest in relatively weak situations and weakest in relatively strong
situations. Organizational settings tend to be strongest nations because they
have rules and other formal regulations that define acceptable behavior and
punish deviant behavior; and they have informal norms that dictate
appropriate behaviors. These formal and informal constraints minimize the
effects of personality traits. By arguing that employees possess stable traits
that lead to cross-situational consistency in behaviors, trait theorists are
implying that individuals don't really adapt to different situations. But there is
a growing body of evidence that an individual's traits are changed by the
organizations in which that individual participates. If the individual's
personality changes as a result of exposure to organizational settings, in what
sense can that individual be said to have traits that persistently and
consistently affect his or her reactions to these very settings? Moreover, people
typically belong to multiple organizations that often include very different kinds
of members, and they adapt to those different situations. Instead of being the
prisoners of a rigid and stable personality framework, as trait theorists
propose, people regularly adjust their behavior to reflect the requirements of
various situations.