“Emotional blackmail?

It’ll
never work on me.
Luckily, I have no emotions.”

- Dwight K. Schrute

Emotions at work
 Emotion Vs Mood

Affect Emotion
Intense feelings
Broad range of that are directed at
feelings people someone or
experience, something
including
(Anger, guilt,
 Affective Traits
Positive affectivity (PA)
Experience positive emotions and
moods; view the world in a positive
light
Tend to be cheerful, enthusiastic,
lively, sociable, and energetic
Strongly related to Extraversion
Negative affectivity (NA)
Experience negative emotions and
moods; view the world in a negative light
Tend to be distressed, depressed,
and unhappy
Related to Emotional Stability
 Affective Traits
• Positive affectivity
• High job satisfaction
• High job performance
• Experience more creativity
• Engage in more OCBs

• Negative affectivity
• Low job satisfaction
• Poor job performance
• Experience more stress
• Engage in more CWBs
The benefits of positive affect
Evidence from cross sectional, longitudinal and experimental studies

Lyubomirsky & King (2005)

 Emotional Labour
Something to think about

• Our work often requires

physical, mental and
emotional labour
• Job-focused emotional
labour vs. employee-
focused emotional labour
• Emotional dissonance is the
difference between how we
feel and what we show
 Emotional Labour
Something to think about

• Emotional regulation strategies

• Deep acting: involves changing true emotions to match the
required emotion
• Surface acting: involves pretending to show the required
emotion
 Emotional Intelligence
“If you don’t like it,
Stanley, you can go to
the back of the bus… Or
the front of the bus or
drive the bus.”

Michael Scott
 Emotional intelligence
The ability to identify, express, understand, manage and use emotions.

Key dimensions:
• Perceiving Emotions in Self and Others
• Deep understanding and expression of emotions
naturally
• Sensitivity to the emotions of others
• Understanding Emotions in Self and Others
• How emotions evolve over time, types of emotions,
which emotions most appropriate in a given
situation
• Emotions Regulation
• Influence one’s emotions and their expression
• A tool used to create and maintain positive affect at
work
• Adopt effective strategies (e.g., cognitive
reappraisals) rather than suppressing emotions
 Emotional Intelligence
IQ vs. EQ

Cognitive Intelligence (IQ)

The capability to reason and solve verbal,
logical, and mathematical problems.
• Best predictor of task performance
• BUT not a good predictor of org.
commitment, OBCs or CWBs

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Predicts better interpersonal relationships,
better job performance in jobs requiring
emotional labour, are better leaders and
perform better in teams
 E D
T
MYTH:

U S
Emotional intelligence is a better predictor of job
performance than Cognitive intelligence

B Yes, but is that the world

you want to live in…?

OB EDITION
11
 Final thoughts
The importance of getting it right!

• Individuals (including you) differ on a number of traits that

have important predictive work outcomes
• But…
• Situational strength matters
• Measurement matters
• Outcome matters
• Important personality topics:
• Nature vs nurture debate
• Big 5 personality traits and MBTI
• Other personality traits: core self evaluation, tolerance
of ambiguity, self-monitoring, dark triad