05 GMGT 2070 Emotions at Work

GMGT 2070 Class 5:
Emotions at Work
Wei Wang, Assistant Professor
wei.wang1@umanitoba.ca
By the end of class, you should know…
 What emotions are

 Some basic and social emotions
 Emotion regulation
 Wellbeing and stress
What are emotions? Why do we have emotions?
 Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with
thoughts, feelings, and behavioral responses.
 It’s evolutionary and socially functional.
 Emotions arise in response to social problems, and presumably change as those problems (or
opportunities) are met
Three components of emotional experience
 Perception of stimulus (appraisal)
 Subjective experience (experience of emotions)
 Bodily expression (physiological arousal; e,g., rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking)

The “common sense” model
The James-Lange model of emotion
The two-factor model of emotion (by Schachter and Singer)
Wild Fire
Our emotional experience
≠
Kids’ emotional experience
The Schachter-Singer Theory
The Schachter-Singer Theory
I’m
excited!
Some Basic Emotions
 Anger
 Happiness
 Surprise
 Disgust
 Sadness
 Fear
Some Social Emotions
Pride: authentic pride vs. hubristic pride

Shame: distress caused by the consciousness of wrong behavior in the eyes of others
Guilty: feel responsible for one’s misconducts
Envy: the painful feeling of inferiority caused when one perceives that another person has
something they desire, but lack
Jealousy: the fear of losing a valued relationship with another person because of an actual or
imagined rival for that person’s attention
Schadenfreude: pleasure taken in another person’s misfortune
2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 13
Emotion Attribution
Emotion as information theory

 Emotions signal us what is going on
 Negative emotions drive individuals to look for reasons while
positive emotions are less likely.
 Emotions color people’s judgements.
Emotions can be easily misattributed (misattribution of arousal)

 The suspension bridge experiment
Emotion Spillover
Work-home spill over

 Psychological of emotional states at work can be carried over to home domain
Home-work spill over

 Psychological of emotional states at home can be carried over to work domain
Emotion Regulation
Display rules: Learned, culturally determined rules that govern the display
of emotion depending on social circumstances
 Women are expected to show more “social smiles”
 People in more collectivistic cultures have a stronger prohibition against
showing negative emotions to ingroup members
 European-Americans preferred high-arousal positive emotions (excitement)
 Chinese preferred low-arousal positive (calm)
Emotional Regulation
 reappraisal – changing how you think about a situation in order to decrease its
emotional impact (antecedent-focused, cognitive change)
 suppression – inhibiting emotional expressions (response-focused, response
modulation)
Ego-depletion
Ego-depletion theory (under debate)

 Emotional resources are limited (just like battery)
 Emotion regulation is taxing and consume emotional
resources
 Individuals’ cognitive ability and self-control will suffer when
they are depleted
Employee Well-being
Broaden-and-build Theory
 Emphasize the benefits of positive emotions
 Broaden thought and promote creativity, exploration, play
 Build psychological resilience – help people develop long-term goals, find meaning in
adversity
 Gratitude can improve well-being and happiness, so be grateful!
The undoing theory

 Positive emotions reverse the effect of negative emotions
 Well, according to my friend’s research, this may not always be true.
• Download the research paper here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597822000772
Group Discussion (5 mins)
Discuss with neighbors around you & be ready to share in class:

Did you ever feel excited or really upset at work? How did you
cope with these emotions?
Employee Stress
Common stressor at work

 Performance pressure
 Peer pressure
 Toxic work environment
 Financial uncertainty
 Job insecurity
 Negative-life events
 Work-life conflict
Symptoms of Stress
 Physiological
 Backaches, headaches, sweaty palms
 Psychological
 Nervousness, anxiety, depression
 Behavioral
 Sleeplessness, over-eating, increased
smoking/alcohol/drug abuse, impulsive buying
Consequences of Stress
Burnout
 State of mental, emotional, and
physical exhaustion
Cost to organizations
 $300 billion per year
 Most common cause of long-
term sickness absence
How to cope with stressors
 Behavioral coping: change behaviors to deal with the situation
 Problem-focused coping: deal with the source of the problem itself
 Cognitive coping: see the problems in a positive way
 Emotion-focused coping: manage your negative emotions by using techniques such

as meditation or basically just sleeping more.
FUNNY Stress Management Techniques

You Don't Find Happiness, You Create It | Katarina Blom
Reminders
 LRJ Chapter 3 about job attitudes

 HBR: Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools
 Submit Team Contracts by Sep 26 10pm via UM Learn.
2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 26

It is a Wrap …
See you next week…

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GMGT 2070 Class 5:

 What emotions are

 It’s evolutionary and socially functional.

 Perception of stimulus (appraisal)

 Subjective experience (experience of emotions)

 Bodily expression (physiological arousal; e,g., rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking)

Our emotional experience

Pride: authentic pride vs. hubristic pride

Emotion as information theory

Emotions can be easily misattributed (misattribution of arousal)

Work-home spill over

Home-work spill over

Ego-depletion theory (under debate)

The undoing theory

Discuss with neighbors around you & be ready to share in class:

Common stressor at work

 Behavioral coping: change behaviors to deal with the situation

 Problem-focused coping: deal with the source of the problem itself

 Cognitive coping: see the problems in a positive way

 Emotion-focused coping: manage your negative emotions by using techniques such

FUNNY Stress Management Techniques

 LRJ Chapter 3 about job attitudes

2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 26

See you next week…

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