Department of Management, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.
Department of Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.
J Appl Psychol. 2022 Jul;107(7):1203-1226. doi: 10.1037/apl0000908. Epub 2021 May 17.
Scholarly understanding of emotions and emotion regulation rests on two incompatible truths-that positive emotions are positively beneficial and should be pursued, and that changing emotions may come at a cost. With both perspectives in mind, to really conclude that pursuing higher positive affect (PA) is a worthy journey, we must take into account the cost of that journey itself. We build from the affect shift literature and draw on self-regulation theories to argue that, although end-states characterized by more positive (and fewer negative) emotions will be beneficial, the emotional changes required to "get there" will have consequences for employee regulatory resources and subsequent behavior. In Study 1, we use experience sampling methodology to track employee emotional journeys-changes in emotions in terms of directionality (e.g., toward pleasure and away from pain) and distance (i.e., magnitude of change in terms of intensity changes within-emotions as well as magnitude of change in activation/valence level between emotions)-that capture the amount of emotion regulation preceding emotion end-states. Teasing apart variance attributable to the end-state versus the journey, we demonstrate that steeper daily PA trajectories (steeper increases in intensity of positive, activated emotions) and valence trajectories (steeper movement away from more negative emotions toward more positive emotions) lead to psychological depletion, ultimately triggering interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors and harming citizenship and performance. In Study 2, we test our core propositions in a lab experiment, demonstrating that different emotional journeys "leading up" to the same affective end-state can change the meaning of that end-state. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
学者对情绪和情绪调节的理解基于两个相互矛盾的事实——积极情绪是有益的，应该追求积极情绪，而改变情绪可能需要付出代价。考虑到这两个观点，要真正得出追求更高的积极情绪（PA）是值得的结论，我们必须考虑到这个过程本身的代价。我们从情绪转变文献中汲取灵感，并借鉴自我调节理论，认为虽然以更积极（和更少消极）情绪为特征的终态将是有益的，但为了“达到目标”而需要的情绪变化将对员工的调节资源和随后的行为产生影响。在研究 1 中，我们使用经验采样方法来跟踪员工的情绪变化——情绪在方向性（例如，向快乐和远离痛苦）和距离（即，情绪内强度变化的幅度以及情绪之间激活/效价水平变化的幅度）方面的变化，以捕捉情绪终态之前的情绪调节量。我们将归因于终态和旅程的差异分开，证明了更陡峭的每日 PA 轨迹（积极、激活情绪强度的急剧增加）和效价轨迹（从更消极的情绪向更积极的情绪急剧移动）会导致心理枯竭，最终引发人际反生产工作行为，并损害公民身份和绩效。在研究 2 中，我们在实验室实验中检验了我们的核心假设，证明了“导致”相同情感终态的不同情绪变化可以改变该终态的意义。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
