Opinion - (2022) Volume 11, Issue 4
Given the prevalence of affect in companies, it is critical to comprehend how and why people regulate their emotions at work. Affect regulation in this context refers to the process through which individuals attempt to transform an existing feeling into a desired feeling. A vast body of data demonstrates that organizational expectations and norms for employees to primarily display good affect at work, as well as employees' purposeful efforts to adjust and improve their affect, are important. In this context, studies have concentrated on how employees regulate their affect. Deep acting, for example, includes employees' efforts to regulate their affect by actually experiencing organizationally required feelings. Surface acting, on the other hand, occurs when employees mimic the proper emotions.
Organizational outcomes
Background
However, little is known about the particular reasons why people use affect regulation at work. In this study, we want to comprehend the performancerelated implications of several motivations that support employees' efforts to improve their feelings at work. Our emphasis on motives in affect regulation is consistent with studies that emphasize the importance of employee goals in the setting of affect regulation, as well as with broader research on how individual motives influence employee behavior in significant ways.
Affect regulation is a type of self-regulation in which individuals exert effort to alter their mental states or behaviors in order to reach a desired outcome. Principles crucial for self-regulation are likewise vital for affect control. Distinct settings, for example, activate diverse desirable ends, or superordinate objectives, which stimulate different motives in affect control. Although the goal of all affect control is to influence the feelings one experiences, the larger motivations that motivate people' efforts to regulate their affect may differ. In this context, research indicates that individuals engage in affect regulation to "feel good" or "avoid feeling bad," resulting in hedonic affect-regulation efforts aimed at experiencing pleasant feelings. Individuals are also motivated to optimize the utility of their sentiments by experiencing affect that aids them in achieving a certain goal. In this context, Tamir posits that, in addition to having a hedonic incentive for regulating their affect, individuals may also have instrumental motives for regulating their affect and hence may focus on experiencing helpful experiences. In our study, we separate hedonic from instrumental reasons in affect regulation during work. In addition, when it comes to instrumental motives in affect regulation, we draw on a major contrast in the organizational literature: individuals' desire to create task-related (or success) results against their desire for social (or belonging-oriented) outcomes. These opposing instrumental motives are anchored in people's underlying needs and have been demonstrated to drive behavior in a variety of job circumstances. The underlying distinction between "task" and "social" is also apparent in literatures on leadership (task vs. social leadership positions, teams, conflict, and work design (task vs. social work characteristics). We propose that the task-related purpose in affect regulation is defined by employees' desire to manage their moods in order to fulfil their specific work tasks well, such as when attempting to feel more optimistic about a task that may appear overwhelming. Affect regulation is characterized by the desire to improve feelings in order to preserve or strengthen social interactions when motivated by a social motive. For example, an individual recognizes the importance of having positive work relationships by attempting to be in a better mood when engaging with colleagues. Thus, our initial research goal is to determine if the distinct motivations for regulating one's affect (hedonic, task-related, and social) that comprise this suggested framework of motivated affect control in the workplace are distinctive.
Although affect regulation is critical in today's organizations, past research has revealed only a few reasons why individuals opt to moderate their affect at work. We created a framework of motivated affect regulation in this research, identifying hedonic as well as instrumental (task-related and social) incentives underlying employees' efforts to moderate their sentiments at work. Our findings show that these basic objectives in workplace affect control can be differentiated and that such motivated affect regulation is related to crucial work outcomes. We address how our findings influence theory and practice in the sections that follow. Similarly, while we found that motivated affect regulation predicted overall job performance and taking charge at work, we did not look at the specific issues at the heart of different motivated-affect-regulation episodes, instead focusing on the overall relationship between individuals' engagement in different types of motivated affect regulation, perceived affect-regulation success, and performance-related outcomes. Future study might use our paradigm to go deeper into performancerelated episodes, such as investigating which types of sensations employees see as valuable in different stages of such episodes, and thus which types of affect may be most effective in driving performance in these phases.
Although research indicates that positive affect is overall most effective in driving positive performance-related outcomes, research may also investigate specific instances when employees choose to worsen rather than improve their affect for instrumental reasons, both in the context of driving performance-related outcomes and when investigating wider organizational outcomes. Employees frequently try to alter and improve their feelings at work. Our findings imply that employees' incentive to participate in affect regulation at work (hedonic, task-related, and social) can be significantly differentiated—and that both hedonic and taskrelated motives in affect regulation are connected to overall job performance and taking charge at work. Attempting to adjust one's affect in order to get along with others, on the other hand, tends to be less effective. Our research enhances understanding of employees' incentives in affect regulation, allowing firms to improve employee performance.
Citation: Richards, J. Managing your Emotions at Work has a Purpose, Individual Incentives and Affect Regulation for WorkRelated Performance Outcomes. J Psychol Abnorm 2022, 11 (4), 001
Received: 07-Aug-2022, Manuscript No. jpac-22-20059 ; Editor assigned: 09-Aug-2022, Pre QC No. jpac-22-20059 (PQ); Reviewed: 23-Aug-2022, QC No. jpac-22-20059 (Q); Revised: 25-Aug-2022, Manuscript No. jpac-22-20059 (R); Published: 27-Aug-2022, DOI: 10.35248/2332- 2594.22.11(4).206
Copyright: ©2022 Richards, J. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
