Summary Lectures Current Topics in Organizational Psychology

Summary Lectures Current Topics in Organizational Psychology
Lecture 1

What are emotions: discrete, innate, functional, biosocial actions and
expression system.
An episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in states of all or
most of the five organismic subsystems in response to the evaluations
of an external or internal stimulus event as relevant to major
concerns of the organism.

Characteristics emotions:
 Elicited by stimulus event;
 Event is appraised as relevant;
 The event disrupts the flow of behavior;
 Systems work together in synchronization to prepare for
action;
 Action;
 Emotional experience;
 Readjustment to changing circumstances;
 Intense;
 Short in duration.

Affect is overarching term and moods & emotions differ from each
other.

AFFECT


MOODS EMOTIONS
Emotions:
 Elicited by specific events: emotions have a cause and are connected to a
person, object, situation.
 Appraisal driven: the elicited event must be relevant to the person,
subjective evaluation of the state; valence positive or negative.
 Action tendencies: motivate behavior.
Moods:
 Low intensity.
 Relatively long lasting (hours, days).
 Diffuse (not clearly linked to a cause).

Trait vs. State
Both emotions and moods can come in the form of trait or state affect.
Trait: stable tendency to feel in a certain way.
State: immediate, in the moment affective experience.

,Organizing emotions (three approaches):
1. Basic or modal emotions
Characteristics
 Innate (blind people also show facial expressions);
 Universal basic expressions;
 Unique feeling states;
 Distinct physiology;
 Presence in primates.
6-7 basic emotions.

2. Dimensional structure
 Subjective feelings can be described by their position in a
dimensional space.
 Valence dimension (positive/pleasant) – (negative/unpleasant).
 Arousal dimension (active/high energy) – (passive/low energy).




3. Discrete emotions
 Uniqueness of emotion;
 Each emotion has a unique profile in experience, physiology and
behavior
(in contrast to dimensional structure where fear and anger are
both negatively valenced high arousal emotions but have different
effects).

, How emotions play a role
1. Within-person
Affective events t work elicit emotions and states which in turn influence
behavior at work (daily hassles => negative mood => lower job
commitment).
2. Between persons
Individual differences in affect and emotional intelligence predict work
outcomes.
Emotional intelligence.
3. Interpersonal interactions
Perception and communication of emotions in dyads.
Emotional labour: some jobs more than others require employees to put
on a smile or to regulate their emotion.
4. Groups
Affective composition, emotional contagion.
5. Organization wide
Emotions play an important role in the experience of injustice in
organizations.

Tendency to experience positive emotions is associated with a higher income,
more positive supervisory evaluations, better sales performance, lower turnover
intentions, higher prosocial behavior (especially proximal moods have an effect).

Depressive realism effect: depressive people make more accurate judgments.
So if positive or negative affect more useful for making effective decisions?

Negative affect and emotions are associated with:
 Anti-social/deviant behavior;
 Higher turnover intentions;
 Competitiveness in negotiations.
Affect and leadership: leaders feel emotions for and express emotions to their
followers.