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UNIT II – THE INDIVIDUAL

MODULE 4: EMOTIONS AND MOODS

At the end of the module, the student is expected to be able to:

1. Differentiate emotions from moods and list the basic emotions and moods;
2. Discuss whether emotions are rational and what functions they serve; 3.
Identify the sources of emotions and moods;
4. Show the impact emotional labor has on employees;
5. Describe the affective events theory and identify its applications; 6. Contrast
the evidence for and against the existence of emotional intelligence; 7. Identify
strategies for emotion regulation and their likely effects; and 8. Apply concepts
about emotions and moods to specific OB issues.

INTRODUCTION

Emotions can be an important part of the way people behave at work. Given
the obvious role emotions play in our lives, it might surprise you that, until recently,
the field of OB has given the topic of emotions little attention, for the following
reasons:

1. Myth of rationality. Until very recently, the protocol of the work world kept a
damper on emotions. A well-run organization did not allow employees to
express frustration, fear, anger, love, hate, joy, grief, or similar feelings thought
to be the antithesis of rationality. Though researchers and managers knew
emotions were an inseparable part of everyday life, they tried to create
organizations that were emotion-free, which was not possible.
2. Many believed emotions of any kind were disruptive. Researchers looked
at strong negative emotions – especially anger – that interfered with an
employee’s ability to work effectively. They rarely viewed emotions as
constructive or contributing to enhanced performance.

Some emotions, particularly exhibited at the wrong time, can hinder

performance. But employees do bring their emotions to work every day, and no study
of OB would be comprehensive without considering their role in workplace behavior.

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WHAT ARE EMOTIONS AND MOODS?

There are three terms that are closely intertwined in order for us to be able to
understand and differentiate emotions from moods, and these are as follows:

1. Affect –defined as a broad range of feelings that people experience. It can be

experienced in the form of emotions or moods.
2. Emotions – are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something.
∙ Caused by specific event
∙ Very brief in duration (seconds or minutes)
∙ Specific and numerous in nature (many specific emotions such as anger,
fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise)
∙ Usually accompanied by distinct facial expressions
∙ Action oriented in nature
3. Moods – feelings that tend to be less intense that emotions and that lack a
contextual stimulus.
∙ Cause is often general and unclear
∙ Last longer than emotions (hours or days)
∙ More general (two main dimensions – positive affect and negative affect –
that are composed of multiple specific emotions)
∙ Generally not indicated by distinct expressions
∙ Cognitive in nature

The Basic Emotions

How many basic emotions are there? There are dozens which are as
follows: 1. Anger
2. Contempt
3. Enthusiasm
4. Envy
5. Fear
6. Frustration
7. Disappointment
8. Embarrassment
9. Disgust
10.Happiness
11.Hate
12.Hope
13.Jealousy
14.Love
15.Pride
16.Surprise
17.Sadness

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Numerous researchers have tried to limit them to a fundamental set. But some
argue that it makes no sense to think in terms of “basic” emotions because even
emotions we rarely experience, such as shock, can have a powerful effect on us.
Other researchers, even philosophers, say there are universal emotions common to
all.

Rene Descartes, often called the founder of modern philosophy, identified six
simple and primitive passions and argued that all the others are composed of some
of these six or are species of them. These are:
1. Wonder
2. Love
3. Hatred
4. Desire
5. Joy
6. Sadness

Other philosophers like Hume, Hobbes, and Spinoza identified categories of

emotions, proof of a basic set of emotions still waits for contemporary researchers.

Robert Plutchik’s emotions list consists of eight primary emotions, which are
as follows:
1. Anger
2. Fear
3. Happiness
4. Sadness
5. Interest
6. Surprise
7. Disgust
8. Shame

According to him all other emotions come from a combination of these primary
emotions. Based on his theory, Robert Plutchik developed the emotions wheel, a
famous tool that simplifies and illustrates complex emotions. Primary emotions are
strong enough for you to recognize instantly. That is because they are often easy to
interpret and influenced by the way you perceive the world around you. But keep in
mind that it is not often that we feel just one primary emotion at a time. And even
though Plutchik‘s theory is widely accepted, experts don’t take it for granted, as this
would oversimplify something that’s actually quite complex. Instead, they categorize
some of the basic emotions as secondary emotions, as they are often intertwined.

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Figure 4 – 1 WHEEL OF EMOTIONS

Psychologists have tried to identify basic emotions by studying facial

expressions. One problem is that some emotions are too complex to be easily
represented on our faces. Many think of love as the most universal of all emotions,
for example, yet it is not easy to express it through only a facial expression. Cultures
also have norms that govern emotional expression, so the way we experience an
emotion is not always the same as the way we show it.

It is unlikely psychologists or philosophers will ever completely agree on a set

of basic emotions, or even on whether there is such a thing. Still many researchers
agree on six essentially universal emotions namely:

1. Anger
2. Fear
3. Sadness
4. Happiness
5. Disgust
6. Surprise

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Some even plot them along a continuum:

happiness – surprise – fear – sadness – anger – disgust

The closer two emotions are to each other on this continuum, the more likely
people will confuse them. We sometimes mistake happiness for surprise, but rarely
do we confuse happiness and disgust.

The Basic Moods: Positive and Negative Affect

One way to classify emotions is by whether they are positive or negative.

Positive emotions – such as joy and gratitude – express a favorable evaluation or
feeling. Negative emotions – such as anger or guilt – express the opposite. Keep in
mind that emotions cannot be neutral. Being neutral is being non-emotional. When
we group emotions into positive and negative categories, they become mood states
because we are now looking at them more generally instead of isolating one
particular emotion.

Positive affect is a mood dimension consisting of positive emotions such as

excitement, self-assurance, and cheerfulness at the high end and boredom,
sluggishness, and tiredness at the low end. Negative affect is a mood dimension
consisting of nervousness, stress, and anxiety at the high end and relaxation,
tranquility, and poise at the low end. Positive and negative affect are moods. We are
using these labels, rather than positive and negative mood, because that is how
researchers label them. Positive and negative affect play out at work and beyond in
that they color our perceptions, and these perceptions can become their own reality.

Negative emotions are likely to translate into negative moods. People think
about events that created strong negative emotions five times as long as they do
about events that created strong positive ones. So, we should expect people to recall
negative experiences more readily than positive ones. Perhaps, one reason is that,
for most of us, negative experiences also are more unusual. Indeed, research finds a
positivity offset, meaning that at zero input (when nothing in particular is going on),
most individuals experience a mildly positive mood. So, for most people, positive
moods are somewhat more common than negative moods. The positivity offset also
appears to operate at work.

The Function of Emotions

1. Emotions are critical to rational thinking. We must have the ability to

experience emotions to be rational. Why? Because our emotions provide
important information about how we understand the world around us. Would
we really want a manager to make a decision about firing an employee
without regarding his or the employee’s emotions? The key to good decision
making is to employ both thinking and feeling in our decisions.

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2. Emotions make us ethical. A growing body of research has begun to examine

the relationship between emotions and moral attitudes. It was previously
believed that, like decision making in general, most ethical decision making
was based on higher-order cognitive processes, but research on moral
emotions increasingly questions this perspective. Examples of moral emotions
include sympathy for the suffering of others, guilt about our own immoral
behavior, anger about injustice done to others, contempt for those who
behave unethically and disgust at violations of moral norms. Numerous
studies suggest that these reactions are largely based on feelings rather than
cold cognition. We can conclude that people who are behaving ethically are at
least partially making decisions based on their emotions and feelings, and this
emotional reaction will often be a good thing.

Sources of Emotions and Moods

The sources of emotions and moods are:

1. Personality. Moods and emotions have a trait component: most people

have built-in tendencies to experience certain moods and emotions more
frequently than others do. Affect intensity refers to individual differences in
the strength with which individuals experience their emotions. Affectively
intense people experience both positive and negative emotions more
deeply.
2. Day of the Week and Time of the Day. People tend to be in their worst
moods (highest negative affect and lowest positive affect) early in the
week, and in their best moods (highest positive affect and lowest negative
affect) late in the week. Regardless of what time we go to bed at night or
get up in the morning, levels of positive affect tend to peak at around the
halfway point between waking and sleeping. Negative affect, however,
shows little fluctuation throughout the day. What does this mean for
organizational behavior? Monday morning is probably not the best time to
ask someone for a favor or convey bad news. Our workplace interactions
will probably be more positive from midmorning onward and also later in
the week.
3. Weather. A fairly large and detailed body of evidence conducted by multiple
researchers suggests weather has little effect on mood. One expert
concluded, “Contrary to the prevailing cultural view, these data indicate that
people do not report a better mood on bright and sunny days (or,
conversely, a worse mood on dark and rainy days)”. Illusory correlation
explains why people tend to think weather improves their mood. It occurs
when people associate two events that in reality have no connection.
4. Stress. Stressful daily events at work negatively affect moods. The effects
of stress also build over time. As the authors of one study note. “A constant
diet of even low-level stressful events has the potential to cause workers to
experience gradually increasing levels of strain over time. Mounting levels
of stress can worsen our moods, and we experience more negative
emotions.
5. Social Activities. For most people, social activities increase positive mood
and have little effect on negative mood. But do people in positive mood
seek out social interactions, or do social interactions cause people to be in
good

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moods? It seems both are true. Does the type of social activity matter?
Indeed it does. Research suggests activities that are physical (skiing or
hiking with friends), informal (going to a party), or epicurean (eating with
others) are more strongly associated with increases in positive mood than
events that are formal (attending a meeting) or sedentary (watching TV
with friends).
6. Sleep. Sleep quality does affect mood. Undergraduates and adult workers
who are sleep-deprived report greater feelings of fatigue, anger, and
hostility. One reason is that poor or reduced sleep impairs decision making
and makes it difficult to control emotions. A recent study suggests poor
sleep also impairs job satisfaction because people feel fatigued, irritable,
and less alert.
7. Exercise. Research consistently shows exercise enhances peoples’
positive mood. While not terribly strong overall, the effects are strongest for
those who are depressed. So exercise may help put you in a better mood,
but do not expect miracles.
8. Age. One study of people ages 18 to 94 revealed that negative emotions
tend to occur less as people get older. Periods of highly positive moods
lasted longer for older individuals, and bad moods faded more quickly. The
study implies emotional experience improves with age; as we get older, we
experience fewer negative emotions.
9. Sex. Evidence does confirm women are more emotionally expressive than
men; they experience emotions more intensely, they tend to “hold onto”
emotions longer than men, and they display more frequent expressions of
positive and negative emotions, except anger. Evidence from a study of
participants from 37 different countries found that men consistently report
higher levels of powerful emotions like anger, whereas women report more
powerless emotions like sadness and fear. Thus, there are some sex
differences in the experience and expression of emotions.

EMOTIONAL LABOR

Every employee expends physical and mental labor by putting body and mind,
respectively, into the job. But jobs also require emotional labor, an employee’s
expression of organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at
work.

The concept of emotional labor emerged from studies of service jobs. Airlines
expect their flight attendants to be cheerful; we expect funeral directors to be sad and
doctors emotionally neutral. But emotional labor is relevant to almost every job. At the
least your managers expect you to be courteous, not hostile, in your interactions with
co-workers. The true challenge arises when employees have to project one emotion
while feeling another. This disparity is emotional dissonance, and I can take a heavy
toll. Emotional dissonance arises when there are inconsistencies between the
emotions people feel and the emotions they project. Emotional labor creates
dilemmas for employees. It can help you, on the job especially, if you separate
emotions into:

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1. Felt emotions – an individual’s actual emotions.

2. Displayed emotions – emotions that are organizationally required and
considered appropriate in a given job.

How we experience an emotion is not always the same as how we show it.
Displaying fake emotions requires us to suppress real ones.

1. Surface acting – is hiding inner feelings and forgoing emotional

expressions in response to display rules; deals with displayed emotions. 2.
Deep acting – is trying to modify our true inner feelings based on display
rules; deals with felt emotions.

AFFECTIVE EVENTS THEORY

We have seen that emotions and moods are an important part of our lives and
our work lives. But how do they influence our job performance and satisfaction? A
model called affective events theory (AET) demonstrates that employees react
emotionally to things that happen to them at work, and this reaction influences their
job performance and satisfaction.

The theory begins by recognizing that emotions are a response to an event in

the work environment. The work environment includes everything surrounding the job
– the variety of tasks and degree of autonomy, job demands, and requirements for
expressing emotional labor. This environment creates work events that can be
hassles, uplifting events, or both. Examples of hassles are colleagues who refuse to
carry their share of work, conflicting directions from different managers, and
excessive time pressures. Uplifting events include meeting a goal, getting support
from a colleague, and receiving recognition for an accomplishment.

These work events trigger positive or negative emotional reactions, to which

employees’ personalities and moods predispose them to respond with greater or
lesser intensity. People who score low on emotional stability are more likely to react
strongly to negative events. And our emotional response to a given event can change
depending on mood. Finally, emotions influence a number of performance and
satisfaction variables, such as organizational citizenship behavior, organizational
commitment, level of effort, intention to quit, and workplace deviance.

Tests of affective events theory suggest the following:

1. An emotional episode is actually a series of emotional experiences, precipitated

by a single events and containing elements of both emotions and mood cycles. 2.
Current emotions influence job satisfaction at any given time, along with the
history of emotions surrounding the event.
3. Because moods and emotions fluctuate over time, their effect on performance
also fluctuates.
4. Emotion-driven behaviors are typically short in duration and of high variability.
5. Because emotions, even positive ones, tend to be incompatible with behaviors
required to do a job, they typically have a negative influence on job performance.

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 Say you work as an aeronautical engineer for Boeing, because of the
downturn in demand for commercial jets, you have just learned the company is
considering laying off 10,000 employees, possibly including you. This event is likely
to make you feel negative emotions, especially fear that you might lose your primary
source of income. And because you are prone to worry a lot and obsess about
problems, this event increases your feelings of insecurity. The layoff also sets in
motion a series of smaller events that create an episode: you talk with your boss and
he assures you your job is safe; you hear rumors your department is high on the list
to be eliminated; and you run into a former colleague who was laid off 6 months ago
and still has not found work. These events, in turn, create emotional ups and downs.
One day, you are feeling upbeat that you will survive the cuts. The next, you might
be depressed and anxious. These emotional swings take your attention away from
your work and lower your job performance and satisfaction. Finally, your response is
magnified because this is the fourth-largest layoff Boeing has initiated in the past 3
years.

Finally, it can be said that AET offers two important messages, as follows:

1. Emotions provide valuable insights into how workplace hassles and uplifting
events influence employee performance and satisfaction.
2. Employees and managers should not ignore emotions or the events that cause
them, even when they appear minor, because they accumulate.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to:

1. Perceive emotions in the self and others

2. Understand the meaning of these emotions
3. Regulate one’s emotions

Several studies suggest EI plays an important role in job performance. One

study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology found
executive MBA students who performed best on a strategic decision making task
were more likely to incorporate emotion centers of the brain into their choice process.
The students also de-emphasized the use of the more cognitive parts of their brains.
Another study looked at the successes and failures of 11 U.S. presidents – from
Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton – and evaluated them on six qualities:
communication, organizational, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional
intelligence. The key quality that differentiated the successful (such as Johnson,
Carter, and Nixon) was emotional intelligence. One simulation study also showed that
students who were good at identifying and distinguishing among their own feelings
were able to make more profitable investment decisions.

EI has been a controversial concept in OB, with supporters and detractors.

The arguments for and against its viability are as follows;

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The Case for EI

1. Intuitive appeal
2. Predicts criteria that matter
3. Biologically based

The Case against EI

1. EI researchers do not agree on definitions

2. EI cannot be measured
3. EI is nothing but personality with a different label

OB Applications of Emotions and Moods

An understanding of emotions and moods can improve our ability to explain

and predict the:

1. Selection
2. Decision Making
3. Creativity
4. Motivation
5. Leadership
6. Negotiation
7. Customer Service
∙ Emotional contagion – the process by which people’s emotions are caused
by the emotions of others.
8. Job Attitudes
9. Deviant Workplace Behaviors
10.Safety and Injury at Work

How Managers Can Influence Moods

What can companies do to improve employees’ moods? Managers can use

humor and give their employees small tokens of appreciation for work well done.
Also, when leaders themselves are in good moods, group members are more
positive, and as a result they cooperate more. Finally, selecting positive team
members can have a contagion effect because positive moods transmit from team
member to team member. It makes sense, then, for managers to select team
members predisposed to experience positive moods.

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CONCLUSION

Emotions and moods are similar in that both are effective in nature. But they
are also different – moods are more general and less contextual than emotions. And
events do matter. The time of day and day of the week, stressful events, social
activities, and sleep patterns are some of the factors that influence emotions and
moods. Emotions and moods have proven relevant for virtually every OB topic we
study, and they have implications for managerial practice.

REFERENCES

ROBBINS, STEPHEN P and JUDGE, TIMOTHY A., 15th Ed. Organizational

Behavior, Pearson Education Inc., Prentice Hall, 2013

https://pediaa.com/difference-between-emotions-and-feelings/
http://www.dbtcentersouthbay.com/what-is-the-difference-between-affect-emotion
and-mood/
https://blog.mindvalley.com/emotion-chart/

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SAQ 1
Directions: Classify each of the following as POSITIVE or NEGATIVE AFFECT,
furthermore, classify as HIGH or LOW END positive/negative affect.
EMOTION POSITIVE/ HIGH END/LOW END
NEGATIVE
AFFECT

1. Self-assurance

2. Tiredness

3. Poise

4. Stress

5. Cheerfulness

6. Excitement

7. Nervousness

8. Relaxation

9. Sluggishness

10.Anxiety

ASAQ 1
EMOTION POSITIVE/ HIGH END/LOW END
NEGATIVE
AFFECT

1. Self-assurance POSITIVE HIGH END

2. Tiredness POSITIVE LOW END

3. Poise NEGATIVE LOW END

4. Stress NEGATIVE HIGH END

5. Cheerfulness POSITIVE HIGH END

6. Excitement POSITIVE HIGH END

7. Nervousness NEGATIVE HIGH END

8. Relaxation NEGATIVE LOW END

9. Sluggishness POSITIVE LOW END

10.Anxiety NEGATIVE HIGH END

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ACTIVITY 1

Cite ten examples each (aside from what was presented in the discussion) for
WORK EVENTS that are considered as UPLIFTING and HASSLES and include brief
explanation as to why they are considered as such.

UPLIFTING
WORK EVENT WHY UPLIFTING?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

HASSLE
WORK EVENT WHY HASSLE?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

RUBRICS
Directions: Please refer to the RUBRICS as your guide in answering the activities.
CRITERIA EXCELLENT GOOD FAIR POOR

Accuracy All of the Most of the Some of the Few to none

answers are answers are answers are of the
correct correct correct answers are
correct

Completion All of the Most of the Some of the Student did

assigned assigned answers are not
work is work is correct accomplish
complete complete the assigned
work

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Timeliness Assignment Assignment Assignment Assignment
was received was received was received was received
on the due one day late two days late 3 days late
date

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