Advances in understanding the links of emotions and context.

It is widely recognized that affect plays a central role in a variety of organizational behavior phenomena, including worker productivity, well-being, and interpersonal relationships (e.g., Elfenbein, 2007; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). As such, it is important to understand the factors that shape work affect. While a good deal of attention has been paid to the role of dispositional factors (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), researchers are increasingly focusing on the importance of dynamic contextual factors in shaping employee affect (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Furthermore, it is becoming apparent that context can shape employee affect through both top-down conscious assessments of the work environment (and one’s relationship with it) as well as bottom-up unconscious processes. The primary objective of the proposed symposium is to examine theoretical and empirical advances aimed at understanding how the work context shapes employee emotional content and dynamics. Adopting a broad perspective on how affect is shaped by perceptions of the work environment, the first paper by Diefendorff, Gabriel, Greguras, Chandler and Moran examines the links of perceived person-environment fit with momentary affect using experience sampled responses. Lagged analyses suggest that affect is primarily an outcome of perceived fit with different aspects of the environment (i.e. organizational values, job demands, job supplies), though the perceived fit with one’s job demands was shaped by momentary affect. These results suggest that momentary work affect has a reciprocally-causal relationship with perceptions of the degree of fit with one’s work environment. The second study by Kim, Yoon, and Glomb, examined customers’ emotional reactions as a means of feedback to service employees, drawing on the social interaction model (Côté, 2005). Their findings suggest that customer displays of positive emotions mediate the relationship between employee displays of positive emotions and employee well-being outcomes, including positive mood, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, customer personality (i.e., agreeableness) moderated some of these links, suggesting the presence of boundary conditions for the impact of employee emotional displays on customer affect. The third paper, by Boyatzis reviews novel findings pertaining to the neural bases of emotional contagion (Boyatzis, Jack, Cesaro, Passarelli, & Khawaja, 2010; Cattaneo & Rizzolatti, 2009). This theoretical work suggests that the combination of two main networks with mirror systems allow people to discern the: (a) context of an observed action or setting; (b) the action; and (c) the intention of the other living being. Contagion seems to spread to others through mimicry and imitation, as individuals in a dyad set off tipping points in each other’s system. The emotional contagion then becomes a form of social contagion, with interaction partners unconsciously sensing each other’s intentions and mimicking one another. The fourth study by Tee, Ashkanasy, and Paulsen proposes an ‘upward emotional contagion’ model, in which followers’ expressions of affect may transcend formal power and hierarchical differences, which has implications for leadership outcomes. Following emotional contagion theory (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) and using evidence from four studies, they found that moods expressed by low-power individuals can be ‘caught’ by individuals with relatively more power and that highly neurotic leaders were more susceptible to negative upward emotional contagion. Furthermore, followers tended to express positive affect towards leaders they perceived as being representative of their groups (i.e. prototypical), and engaged in actions that showed that they were willing to forgo their own self-interests (i.e. self-sacrificial). The final study, by Petitta, and Di Cave proposes an expanded approach to emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994) by: (a) simultaneously considering contagion absorbed by and issued towards others, (b) contextualizing its measure in work settings, as in the Emotional Contagion at Work Scale (ECWS), (c) exploring the differential association of contagion with leaders, colleagues, and customers, and (d) studying the role of emotional dynamics in predicting group results. Their study, on a sample of rescue service operators, found support for the differential role played by the contagion received from and directed towards others in influencing group results. Furthermore, their findings suggest that the effects of different emotional contagion dimensions may depend on the person under consideration (i.e., leader, colleague, customer). The symposium will conclude with a discussion led by Dr. Stéphane Côté from the University of Toronto. Dr. Côté is an expert on emotions in the workplace and has published extensively in the leading journals of the field, including Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Review, Emotion, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.