This is a summary of all lectures and articles of course 4.1 attitudes and emotions in organizations which is part of the master in positive organizational psychology at the EUR.
,Summary 4.1 Attitudes and Emotions in Organizations 2019-2020
Week 1
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, Summary 4.1 Attitudes and Emotions in Organizations 2019-2020
Lecture 1
2 September 2019 – Jan L. Pletzer
Introduction Into the Master of Positive Organization Psychology
There will be three courses which go into organizational psychology: (1) attitudes and emotions, (2)
groups at work, and (3) personnel selection. Then there is a statistics course, followed by the master thesis
and an optional internship. The lectures for the third course will be mandatory (!), since the problems also
relate to statistics. You will also have to visit one out of five HR consultancies during the course. You
will also have to buy a book: Mark Cook (2016). Personnel Selection, 6 th Edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
Introduction Into Attitudes and Emotions in Organizations
They expect that you critically read the articles, and discuss these in the tutorial groups. Furthermore, you
should be able to compare articles and see how they add up with regard to the learning goals. You should
also be able to apply the information during the exams and practical groups.
There are four problems: (1) attitudes and emotions, (2) motivation, (3) emotional labor, (4) emotional
intelligence. The four problems are strongly related to social psychology as organizational psychology
does not have a lot of literature on its own. There will be five lectures, of which Jan will give three. The
other lectures will be given by Arnold Bakker and Paris Petrou. You will have to read some articles for
the lectures, which are not included in the literature. There will be exam questions about the le cture.
Attitudes and Emotions
The quality of the articles have a high impact factor, and are therefore very good. The impact factor is
based on the total amount of citations, divided by the total amount of publications. Every impact factor
above 1 is really strong. The exam has open ended and closed questions.
Emotions and moods are often used to refer to the same thing, but they are in fact different. The differences
between emotions and moods lie in, according to Ekman and Frijda:
1. Duration: Moods lasts longer than emotions.
2. Link: Moods lower the threshold for experiencing certain emotions.
3. Facial expressions: Moods do not have a fixed facial expression, whilst most emotions do.
4. Triggers: Emotions are triggered by distinct events, whilst moods most of the time have multiple causes.
5. Intentionality: Unlike moods, emotions have a focus.
The arguments of Ekman and Frijda have gotten criticism from other scientists:
• Not all moods last longer than emotions.
• Not all emotions have unique facial expressions.
• Not all emotions have recognizable antecedents.
Functional analysis which is done by Davidson means that emotions lead to actions, whilst moods lead to
cognitions. Moods are more subjective. Furthermore, emotions are triggered by event which occur
quickly.
According to Paul Ekman, there are six basic emotions which can be found in all people: (1) happiness,
(2) sadness, (3) anger, (4) fear, (5) surprise, and (6) disgust. There is another emotion, contempt, which
might be the 7 th emotion. These emotions are due to biology and not so much due to socialization. Another
research was done by Kohler et al. (2013). They studied intense and less intense versions of the emotions.
The pictures of the emotions where then shown to healthy subjects and schizophre nia patients. They have
found that extreme emotions are generally more easily recognizable for people. Furthermore,
schizophrenia are less able to recognize emotions in others, overall. Finally, they found that happiness
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, Summary 4.1 Attitudes and Emotions in Organizations 2019-2020
may be most recognizable for both groups, both in the mild and extreme version. Negative emotions are
harder to recognize in a mild version and for schizophrenia patients.
It was explained that a very influential article was published on the topic of “Bad if Stronger Than Good”.
It was found that negative emotions/events are far more likely to influence you than positive
emotions/events do. For example, there are more words for negative emotions than positive emotions.
There is also more regulation strategies for negative emotions than positive emotions. Furthermore, Dalal
(2005) has pointed out that the bad does not have a stronger influence than the good on t he workplace.
However, it is currently hard to say.
The evolutionary value of emotions is that emotions energize individuals to tak e appropriate actions. We
evaluate the situation. If we think the situation positively influences our well-being, it will lead to positive
emotions and vice versa. Negative emotions can also trigger the fight or flight response. Research is more
clear on the purpose of negative emotions than positive ones. They did find that interest leads to attention.
Furthermore, the emotion of affection/love has an evolutionary value.
The broaden and build theory by Fredrickson
states that positive emotions lead to general action
tendencies, whilst negative emotions lead to
specific action tendencies. Positive emotions occur
in non-life-threatening situations. Positive emotions
lead to openness to new experiences which lead to
an indirect, long-lasting advance. The mean idea is
that you broaden the cognitive behavioral repertoire
which builds valuable personal resources which you
can use when confronted by threats.
It was found that the benefits of happiness is that people who experience happiness more often enjoy more
social rewards, have better physical and mental health, have more energy, are more cooperative, prosocial
and charitable, and superior work outcomes. These findings are congr uent with the broaden and build
theory.
In the nun study, they wanted to find out whether positive emotions increase life expectancy. They
researched 180 nuns and made them write autobiographies from 1930 when nuns joint the congregation.
These reports were analyzed and scored for negative and positive emotion words. They found that people
in the highest percentile of positive emotion sentences in the report, where less likely to pass away before
the end of the study (which took a couple of years). The difference in life expectancy was also highe r in
general for people who had written positive emotional content.
Cohn et al. (2009) had also tested the broaden and build theory. They measured ego resilience, positive
emotions (over 30 days, through diary entries), and then ego resilience again. They found that people who
experience more positive emotions shows significantly more resilience during the second measurement.
They have also tested whether negative emotions reduce the effects of positive emotions. They found that
this was not true. Positive emotions induce growth independent of negative emotions and are distinct from
the absence of negative emotions. Emotions, rather than life satisfaction, lead to growth over time.
Attitudes are a mental and neural stage of readiness organized through experience, exerting a directive
or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it was related,
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