PSY2001

Introduction to Business Psychology and

Organizational Behavior
Lecture 4 :
Emotions
Emotions and Moods Chapter
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2019).
Organizational Behavior. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
18 Feb, 2025
START ZOOM RECORDING
 Agenda
1. Recognize the differences between emotions and
moods
2. Understand sources between emotions and moods
3. Understand the impact of emotional labor on
employees
4. Learn about affective events theory and emotional
intelligence
5. Identify strategies for emotion regulation
 Affect
• Generic term that cover a broad range of
feelings, including both emotions and moods

Image source: Kremer, L., et al. "The

nuts and bolts of animal emotion."
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
113 (2020): 273-286.
 Emotion
• Intense, discrete, and short lived feeling
experience
• Caused by the specific event
• Action-oriented in nature
 Mood
• Longer lived
• Less intense feelings
• Arise without specific event acting as a stimulus
• Cognitive in nature
How Many Emotions Are There?
Paul Ekman studied how we express our
emotions to identify basic emotions.
 How Many Emotions Are There?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion

• Paul Ekman
– 6 Basic Emotions
– typically are
manifested and
recognized
universally across
cultures.
 How Many Emotions Are There?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion

• Paul Ekman
– 6 Basic Emotions
 Limitation - Basic Emotions
• Facial expressions are sometimes difficult to
interpret
• Cultural differences in emotion recognition
– People in collectivistic countries focus more on eyes;
people in individualistic countries focus more on
position of the mouth
Masuda and colleagues (2008) found that the
Japanese were more influenced by the
surrounding people's emotions than North
Americans were when rating the central
person's emotion.

Masuda, T., Ellsworth, P. C., Mesquita, B., Leu, J.,

Tanida, S., & Van de Veerdonk, E. (2008). Placing the
face in context: Cultural differences in the
perception of facial emotion. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 94(3), 365–381.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.3.365
 Moral Emotions
• Event interpretation ties closely to our
emotional experiences
– Judgment of situations may evoke emotions that
have moral implications
 Moral Disgust
• The disdain we feel about violations of moral
norms
– Our responses to moral emotions differ from
other responses to other emotions
 Invitation to Pause and Think…
• What situations would trigger moral emotions
at work?
 Situations that Trigger https://link.springer.com/
article/10.1007/s10869-
Moral Emotions at Work 016-9484-3

• Harming and Helping

– People tend to be angry or contemptuous in
response to actions that harm themselves and
others

– People are grateful for and admire actions that

help themselves and others in the pursuit of
pleasure and achievement.
 Situations that Trigger https://link.springer.com/
article/10.1007/s10869-
Moral Emotions at Work 016-9484-3

• Fairness and Reciprocity

– Studies have indeed identified anger as a proximal
outcome of injustice (Weiss et al. 1999)

– Admiration has been found to occur in response

to fair treatment and self-sacrificial behavior on
the part of organizational leaders (Vianello et al.
2010).
Situations that Trigger https://link.springer.com/
article/10.1007/s10869-
Moral Emotions at Work 016-9484-3

• In-group Loyalty
– Excellent performance and citizenship, on the
other hand, helps the group and organization and
thus may trigger admiration and/or gratitude.
Situations that Trigger https://link.springer.com/
article/10.1007/s10869-
Moral Emotions at Work 016-9484-3

• Respect for Others

– Respect for authority, role relationships, and
others in general (Graham et al. 2011)

– Fitness (2000) found that disrespect and

humiliation were among the most common anger-
inducing events experienced by workers.
• Other experiences such as ostracism, abusive
supervision, and bullying are also relevant to this
foundation, because they threaten the quality of role
relationships.
 Basic Affect
• Circumplex Model
(Russell, 1980)
– Valence
• How positive and
negative the affect is
– Arousal
• How physiological
activated the affect is
 Positivity off-set
• The tendency of most individuals to
experience a mildly positive mood at zero
input (when nothing in particular going on)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/169322/people-worldwide-reporting-lot-positive-emotions.aspx
 Cultural Differences in Ideal Affect
• Affect valuation theory (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung,
2006)
– individuals differ in the types of affective states that
they want to experience (i.e., their ideal affect),
independent of the types of affective states that they
actually experience (i.e., their actual affect).
 Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Personality
– Neuroticism
• Trait characterised by sadness, moodiness, and emotional
instability
– Affectively intense people experience both positive
and negative emotions more deeply
 Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Time of the Day
– Levels of positive affect tend to peak in the morning
and then remain at that level until early evening
– For negative affect, most studies showed that it
fluctuates less than positive affect
• Negative affect is lowest in the morning and highest in the
late evening
 Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Day of the week
– People tend to experience the best moods on the
weekends and the worst moods on Monday across
most cultures
 Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Weather
– The average effect of weather on mood was only
small (Denissen et al., 2008)
– Illusory Correlation
• People tend to associate two events when in reality there
is no connection

Denissen, J. J., Butalid, L., Penke, L., & van Aken, M. A. (2008). The
effects of weather on daily mood: a multilevel approach. Emotion
(Washington, D.C.), 8(5), 662–667. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013497
Other Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Age
– Positivity effect
• Older adults tend to self-regulate by actively trying to increase
the positivity in their attention and memory

https://workplaceinsight.net/olde
r-people-are-happiest-at-work/
 Other Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Sex
– Men consistently reported higher levels of powerful
emotions (e.g, Anger); women reported more
powerless emotions (e.g., Sadness)

– People tend to interpret the women’s emotional

expressions as being dispositional (e.g, personality);
men’s emotional expression as being dispositional

Gard, M. G., & Kring, A. M. (2007). Sex differences in the Barrett, L. F., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2009). She’s emotional. He’s having a bad
time course of emotion. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 7(2), day: Attributional explanations for emotion stereotypes. Emotion, 9(5), 649–
429–437. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.429 658. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016821
Other Sources of Emotions and Moods
• Stress
– Will talk more on ‘Work stress management’ lecture
• Social Activity
• Sleep
• Exercise
A break?
 Emotional Labor
• A situation in which in employees express
organizationally desired emotions during
interpersonal interactions
– The way we experience and express our emotions
may not be the consistent with each other
• Felt emotions (actual emotions)
• Displayed emotions (emotions that organizationally
required and considered appropriate in a given job
 Emotional Labor
• Surface acting
– Hiding one’s feelings and
forgoing emotional expressions
in response to display rules

• Deep acting
– Trying to modify ones’ true
feelings based on display rules
 Emotional Labor
• Displaying our emotions we do not really feel
can be exhausting
– Emotional dissonance
• Inconsistencies between the emotions people feel and
the emotions they project
 Affective Events Theory
• Employees react emotionally to things that
happen to them at work
– These reactions influence their job performance
and satisfaction
 Emotional Intelligence
• The ability to
– Perceive emotions in the self and others
– Understand the meaning of these emotions
– Regulate his or her own emotions accordingly
Emotional Intelligence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcLf_Ozw4lc
 Emotion Regulation
• Emotional suppression
– Suppressing initial emotional responses to
situations
• Helpful only when a strongly negative event would illicit
a distressed emotional reaction during a crisis
 Emotion Regulation
• Cognitive reappraisal
– Reframing our outlook on an emotional situation
• Most helpful to people in situations where they cannot
control the sources of stress

We still have half of cup of water!

 Emotion Regulation
• Social Sharing/Venting
– Open expression of emotions
• Reduce anger reactions when people can talk about the
facts of a bd situation, their feelings about the
situation, or any positive aspects of situations
• Venting is helpful or not depends on the listener's
responses
 Emotion Regulation
• Mindfulness
– Receptively paying attention to and being aware
of the present moment, events, or experiences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=hJ4fiMLjlW8
 Recap
1. What are the differences between emotions and
moods?
2. Can you identify sources of emotions and moods?
3. What is emotional labor?
4. What are affective events theory and emotional
intelligence?
5. Can you name typical strategies for emotion
regulation in the workplace?
 End of Lecture 4

What’s Next:
Personality and Intelligence