Emotional inertia at work: correlates of inflexible emotion dynamics in the workplace

Individual differences in emotion dynamics represent a key source of information about people’s psychological functioning and mental health. Thus, as work is among the most important determinant of adults' emotional life, investigating individual differences in emotion dynamics is particularly relevant in the workplace, where affective experiences are closely related to organizational behaviour and effectiveness. In three experience sampling studies I examined a central feature of emotion dynamics, namely emotional inertia. Emotional inertia refers to the degree to which emotional states are self-predictive and linger over time, describing their resistance to change (e.g., Kuppens et al., 2010). It is related to several indicators of maladjustment, yet there is limited research on its correlates in the workplace. The first study (n= 128) aimed at examining the association between exhaustion, the core dimension of burnout, with inertia of negative emotions. The second study (n = 116) aimed to replicate findings from the first study and additionally examined the moderating role of inertia of negative emotions in the relationship between negative emotions at work and counterproductive work behaviour. Finally, Study 3 (n = 120) explored the association between inertia of negative emotions and heart rate variability (HRV), an important marker of the ability to flexibly adjust to a changing environment. Findings from this Thesis show that (1) exhaustion is consistently associated with inertia of negative emotions; (2) inertia of negative emotions aggravates the relationship between negative emotions and workers’ counterproductive work behaviour; (3) workers with low HRV tend to show high time persistence of negative emotions at work. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.