Chapter Four: Workplace Emotions, Attitudes, and Stress
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
4-1 Explain how emotions and cognition (conscious reasoning) influence attitudes and behavior.
4-2 Describe emotional labor and discuss strategies for displaying expected emotions at work.
4-3 Define emotional intelligence and discuss its importance in the workplace.
4-4 Explain how job satisfaction and dissatisfaction affect work behavior, including job performance and customer service.
4-5 Summarize the three types of organizational commitment, and discuss strategies to increase affective commitment.
4-6 Discuss the dynamics (stressors, stress processes, stress outcomes) of work-related stress, and identify five ways to manage work-related stress.
Emotions Defined
Emotions are defined as psychological, behavioral, and physiological episodes that create a state of readiness. All emotions share several characteristics:
Experiences: Emotions are experiences, not evaluations.
Brief Events: They occur as brief events in time.
Nonconscious: Mostly experienced at nonconscious levels.
Motivating: They create a readiness to act.
Types of Emotions
The Circumplex Model of Emotions outlines various emotions based on dimensions of valence (positive or negative) and activation (high or low). For example, high-activation emotions may include being aroused or excited, while low-activation emotions could relate to being calm or bored.
Attitudes versus Emotions
Attitudes:
A cluster of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral intentions.
Arrive from conscious reasoning processes.
More stable over time.
Emotions:
Direct experiences related to an attitude object.
Operate as fleeting events, often at a nonconscious level.
Represent brief experiences.
Emotions, Attitudes, and Behavior Model
The model illustrates how emotions and attitudes influence behavior by suggesting that emotions affect cognition and decision-making, which ultimately shape actions.
Attitude–Behavior Contingencies
Three types of contingencies connect attitudes to behaviors:
1. Beliefs-to-Feelings Contingencies:
Two individuals may share the same belief but have differing emotional responses toward it (different valences).
2. Feelings-to-Behavioral Intentions Contingencies:
Individuals sharing the same feelings may arrive at different behavioral intentions rooted in their experiences, personality, and societal norms.
3. Behavioral Intentions-to-Behavior Contingencies:
Even if two individuals have the same behavioral intentions, external circumstances or individual skills may only enable one to act upon those intentions.
How Emotions Influence Attitudes and Behavior
Key influences of emotions include:
Emotion markers attach to sensory information and can evoke emotions upon recollection.
Cumulative episodes of emotions affect feelings and beliefs.
Emotions directly affect the cognitive processing of attitude objects.
Behaviors are influenced by emotions, personality, and organizational efforts to foster positivity in the workplace.
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance refers to emotions like ambivalence or regret that arise from the perceived inconsistency of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. This dissonance breaches the human need for rationality. Key points include:
Dissonance motivates individuals to seek consistency.
Changing beliefs or feelings is one way to reduce dissonance, as is focusing on the positives of a selected choice or the negatives of options not chosen.
Individuals may also compensate for dissonance by emphasizing other consonant behaviors.
Emotional Labor
Emotional labor involves the effort, planning, and control that is required to display the emotions desired by an organization. Emotional labor requirements increase in roles that necessitate:
A variety of intense emotions.
Frequent and prolonged customer interactions.
Strict adherence to display rules without casual deviation.
Consequences of emotional labor can include stress, exhaustion, and psychological detachment, which can be compounded by cultural differences in emotional display norms.
Strategies for Displaying Expected Emotions
The chapter outlines two primary approaches to emotional labor:
Approach #1: Surface Acting
Involves pretentiously displaying expected emotions, often deemed ineffective for emotional labor.
Approach #2: Deep Acting
Involves consciously regulating emotions to feel and express the required emotions authentically. Key strategies include:
Changing the situation.
Modifying the situation.
Suppressing or amplifying emotions.
Shifting attention toward more positive aspects.
Reframing the current situation.
Emotional Intelligence Model
This model houses four essential dimensions of emotional intelligence:
1. Awareness of Own Emotions:
Recognizing and understanding one’s own emotional state.
2. Awareness of Others' Emotions:
Recognizing and understanding the emotional states of others.
3. Management of Own Emotions:
Involves the ability to regulate one’s emotions effectively.
4. Management of Others' Emotions:
Involves effectively regulating others' emotions to foster positive interactions.
Emotional Intelligence Outcomes and Development
The development of emotional intelligence is linked to several positive outcomes, such as:
Enhanced teamwork and collaboration.
Improved performance in emotional labor contexts.
Better decision-making that involves others.
Promotion of a more positive mindset conducive to creativity.
Development of more effective leadership capabilities.
To cultivate emotional intelligence, practices such as measuring it in job applicants and investing in training and feedback are key.
Additionally, emotional intelligence tends to increase with age.
EVLN: Responses to Dissatisfaction
The EVLN framework outlines four responses to job dissatisfaction:
E (Exit): Leaving the situation, such as quitting, transferring, or being absent.
V (Voice): Acting to change the situation through problem solving or voicing complaints.
L (Loyalty): Patiently waiting for conditions to improve.
N (Neglect): Reducing effort or quality of work, increasing absenteeism.
Job Satisfaction and Performance
There is a moderately positive relationship between job satisfaction and performance. However, this relationship is complicated by various factors:
General attitudes may not always effectively predict specific behaviors.
Employees often lack control over their performance.
A reversal in causation can exist, where performance influences job satisfaction, especially when performance isn't rewarded.
Service Profit Chain Model
According to the Service Profit Chain Model, employee job satisfaction positively affects customer satisfaction and ultimately profits. Key elements include:
Employee emotions directly affect customer emotions.
Employees with more experience provide better service, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which enhances company profitability.
Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is categorized into three types:
1. Affective Commitment:
An emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. It typically results in lower turnover and higher motivation and organizational citizenship.
2. Continuance Commitment:
A calculative attachment to the organization, characterized by a recognition of losses (social/economic) upon leaving and a lack of alternative employment opportunities. This commitment often results in lower performance and organizational citizenship and may lead to grievances.
3. Normative Commitment:
A sense of obligation or moral duty to the organization, often influenced by the norm of reciprocity.
Building Affective Commitment
Strategies to foster affective commitment include:
Supporting organizational justice and employee well-being.
Aligning employees’ values with those of the organization to create shared values.
Building trust by ensuring positive expectations and relationships between management and employees.
Enhancing organizational comprehension to provide employees with a clear mental model of the organization, encouraging identification with it.
Promoting employee involvement to create a sense of psychological ownership and social identity within the company.
What Is Stress?
Stress is defined as an adaptive response to perceived challenges or threats to well-being, preparing individuals to handle hostile environmental conditions. It is categorized into two forms: eustress (positive stress) and distress (negative stress).
Stress Experience and Consequences
The General adaptation syndrome model illustrates the stress experience through three stages:
Alarm Reaction: The body’s initial response to a stressor.
Resistance: The body's adaptation to the stressor.
Exhaustion: The depletion of physical and mental energy due to prolonged stress exposure.
Consequences of distress can manifest physiologically, psychologically, and behaviorally.
Workplace Stressors
Various workplace stressors can adversely impact employee performance, including:
Organizational Constraints: Limitations that interfere with job performance, contributing to feelings of lack of control.
Interpersonal Conflict: Situations where others’ behaviors impede goal achievement, including issues of psychological and sexual harassment.
Work Overload: Excessive work hours or intensive tasks leading to increased stress levels.
Low Task Control: Occurs when employees have responsibility over tasks but limited control on how to meet those responsibilities, increasing stress.
Individual Difference in Stress
Individuals may experience less stress or report fewer negative outcomes when they possess:
Good physical health, supported by exercise and wellness practices.
Effective coping strategies when facing stress.
Favorable personality traits, such as lower neuroticism and higher extraversion.
A positive self-concept, marked by high self-esteem, self-efficacy, and an internal locus of control.
Low tendencies toward workaholism.
Managing Work-Related Stress
Strategies for managing work-related stress include:
Removing the stressor directly.
Withdrawing from the stressor.
Changing one’s perception of stress.
Controlling the consequences of stress.
Seeking social support from colleagues and peers.
Accessibility Content
For visual representations in this chapter, alternative text is available for key models like the Circumplex Model, Emotional Intelligence Model, and Service Profit Chain Model, ensuring comprehensive understanding regardless of the preferred learning method.
Here are the answers to the learning objectives:
4-1 Explain how emotions and cognition (conscious reasoning) influence attitudes and behavior.
Emotions and cognition influence attitudes and behavior through several mechanisms. Emotions attach to sensory information as emotion markers, which can evoke feelings upon recollection. Cumulative emotional episodes affect an individual's feelings and beliefs, and emotions directly impact how we cognitively process attitude objects. Behavior is ultimately influenced by this interplay of emotions, personality, and an organization's efforts to foster positivity. Cognition, or conscious reasoning, forms the basis of attitudes, which are more stable clusters of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral intentions. These attitudes then operate in conjunction with fleeting emotional experiences to shape an individual's actions.
4-2 Describe emotional labor and discuss strategies for displaying expected emotions at work.
Emotional labor is the effort, planning, and control required to display emotions desired by an organization, particularly in roles involving frequent and intense customer interactions or strict display rules. The consequences can include stress, exhaustion, and psychological detachment. Strategies for displaying expected emotions include:
Surface Acting: Pretending to display expected emotions, often considered ineffective because it doesn't align internal feelings with external display.
Deep Acting: Consciously regulating one's emotions to genuinely feel and express the required emotions. This can involve:
Changing the situation.
Modifying the situation.
Suppressing or amplifying emotions.
Shifting attention toward more positive aspects.
Reframing the current situation.
4-3 Define emotional intelligence and discuss its importance in the workplace.
Emotional intelligence is a model comprising four essential dimensions: awareness of one's own emotions, awareness of others' emotions, management of one's own emotions, and management of others' emotions. Its importance in the workplace is significant, leading to outcomes such as enhanced teamwork and collaboration, improved performance in emotional labor roles, better decision-making, a more positive mindset conducive to creativity, and the development of effective leadership capabilities. Emotional intelligence can be cultivated through practices like measuring it in job applicants, investing in training and feedback, and it tends to increase with age.
4-4 Explain how job satisfaction and dissatisfaction affect work behavior, including job performance and customer service.
Job satisfaction generally has a moderately positive relationship with job performance, though this is complicated by factors such as general attitudes not always predicting specific behaviors, employees often lacking control over their performance, and a potential reversal in causation where performance can influence satisfaction, especially when rewarded. Job dissatisfaction can lead to various work behaviors according to the EVLN framework: Exit (leaving the situation), Voice (acting to change the situation), Loyalty (patiently waiting for improvement), or Neglect (reducing effort or increasing absenteeism). In terms of customer service, the Service Profit Chain Model highlights that employee job satisfaction positively affects customer satisfaction and company profitability. Specifically, employee emotions directly affect customer emotions, and more experienced employees provide better service, leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and enhanced profits.
4-5 Summarize the three types of organizational commitment, and discuss strategies to increase affective commitment.
Organizational commitment is categorized into three types:
Affective Commitment: An emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. It is linked to lower turnover, higher motivation, and greater organizational citizenship.
Continuance Commitment: A calculative attachment based on recognizing losses (social/economic) upon leaving and a lack of alternative employment. This type often results in lower performance and may lead to grievances.
Normative Commitment: A sense of obligation or moral duty to remain with the organization, often influenced by the norm of reciprocity.
Strategies to increase affective commitment include supporting organizational justice and employee well-being, aligning employee values with organizational values, building trust between management and employees, enhancing organizational comprehension (clear mental model of the organization), and promoting employee involvement to foster psychological ownership and social identity.
4-6 Discuss the dynamics (stressors, stress processes, stress outcomes) of work-related stress, and identify five ways to manage work-related stress.
Stress is an adaptive response to perceived challenges or threats, creating a readiness to handle hostile conditions, and can be positive (eustress) or negative (distress). The stress process typically follows the General Adaptation Syndrome:
Alarm Reaction (initial response)
Resistance (body's adaptation)
Exhaustion (depletion of energy from prolonged exposure).
Workplace stressors include organizational constraints, interpersonal conflict (including harassment), work overload (excessive hours or tasks), and low task control (responsibility without control over how to meet it). Consequences of distress can manifest physiologically, psychologically, and behaviorally. Individuals may experience less stress with good physical health, effective coping strategies, favorable personality traits (e.g., lower neuroticism), a positive self-concept, and low workaholism tendencies.
Five ways to manage work-related stress are:
Removing the stressor directly.
Withdrawing from the stressor.
Changing one’s perception of stress.
Controlling the consequences of stress.
Seeking social support from colleagues and peers.