Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Feelings About Work: Job Attitudes and

Emotions

Copyright Paul E. Spector, All rights reserved, March 15, 2005

 Learning Objectives
• Define job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.
• Characterize the differences between job satisfaction
and organizational commitment.
• Explain how job satisfaction and organizational
commitment are measured.
• Summarize the findings on possible causes and
effects of job satisfaction and organizational
commitment.
• Discuss how emotions are experienced by
employees at work and how they impact
organizations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn3I6-
DBLJM
 Let's imagine: scenario 1
You just came to work and found a letter of
appreciation from your boss! it's because you
have just finished a great project!
1. how would you feel?
2. will emotion have any effect upon your
behavior at job? if yes, how?
 Scenario 2
You are continually having too much time
pressure from your boss. Despite working
longer period each day feel you won't be able
to finish the project. Because it's too much to
get the project done by this week.
1. How would you feel?
2. what's could consequences of your emtion at
work?
 Emotions and Work
• Positive emotions: Feeling good
– Greater creativity, job satisfaction, and contextual
performance

• Negative emotions: Feeling bad

– Lower job satisfaction
– Higher absence and turnover
 Life is full of emotion
Emotion at work:

Emotion at Non work

Work Behavior ← → behavior
work
 Emtional labour: good / bad?
• required expression of certain emotions at
workis called emotional labour
• possible effects on employees?
• positive/ negative?
 zapf's sudies (2002)
person experienceing the ＋
emotions being displayed

pretend to be happy but

experiencing emotional
－
dissonance

having control over the Neutral

situation
 Visual learning on consequence
of emotional labour
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2KoB
k8cBs0
 Nature of Job Satisfaction
• Global approach: Overall satisfaction with work
• Facet approach: Satisfaction with aspects of the
job
– I.e. pay, promotion, supervision, and nature of work
Mean levels of U.S. Satisfaction On
the Job Satisfaction Survey
 Assessment of Job Satisfaction
• Self-report survey
– Person best judge of own feelings
• Standard scales exist
– Job Descriptive Index (JDI)
• 5 facets of job satisfaction
– Job In General (JIG)
• Global job satisfaction
 Antecedents of Job Satisfaction:
Environmental
• Job characteristics (Hackman & Oldham, 1976)
– Characteristics  Psychological States  Job
satisfaction
– Strong research support linking perceptions of
characteristics to job satisfaction, but not objective
characteristics
• Pay
– Salary compared to people in same job more important
than different jobs
• Justice
– Distributive and procedural related to global and facet
satisfaction
Antecedents of Job Satisfaction:
• Environmental

Job Satisfaction

Personality
Environmental:Job Characteristics Theory
 Envrionmental: other related
antecedents
• Pay: job satisfaction/ pay satisfaction?
• justice
– distributive justice
– procedural justice
Antecedents of Job Satisfaction:
Personal

Personality

Negative affectivity Locus of control

(high NAs less satisfied) internal vs external
(externals less satisfied)
 Antecedents of Job Satisfaction:
Personal
• Gender
– Few gender differences
• Age
– Curvilinear—satisfaction lowest age 26
to 31
• Culture and ethnicity
– Few racial differences
 Person-Job Fit approach
• Match between individual and the job
• People differ in reactions to same situation
• Characteristics of the person is a moderator
– Moderator: Variable that affects relationship between two
other variables
• Growth need strength (GNS)
– People high on GNS are more satisfied with high scope jobs
– People low on GNS are not more satisfied with high scope
jobs
 Effects of Job Satisfaction
• Job performance
– Modest correlation
– More evidence that performance causes satisfaction
• Turnover
– Dissatisfied people more likely to quit
• Absence
– Very small correlation - other factors more important
• Health and well-being
– Relates to physical symptoms, anxiety, and depression
• Life satisfaction
– Spillover, compensation, and segmentation hypotheses