Contextualizing Emotional Display Rules: Examining the Roles of Targets and Discrete Emotions in Shaping Display Rule Perceptions

The present investigation explored how emotional display rules at work differed as a function of discrete emotions and specific work targets. Display rules for the positive emotion of happiness were most likely to involve expressing the emotion as felt or expressing it with less intensity than is felt. Display rules for the negative emotions of sadness and anger were equally likely to involve showing nothing of the emotion or showing the emotion with less intensity than is felt. In contrast, display rules for fear, disgust, and contempt were most likely to involve showing nothing of the emotions. Furthermore, display rules differed across organizational targets, with the most control over emotional displays occurring for customer targets and the least control occurring for coworker targets. In sum, emotional display rules at work appear to be much more complex and nuanced than has been shown in previous organizational research.

[1]  S. Pugh,et al.  Service with a Smile: Emotional Contagion in the Service Encounter , 2001 .

[2]  A. Öhman,et al.  Automatically elicited fear: Conditioned skin conductance responses to masked facial expressions , 1994 .

[3]  S. Bolton.  Emotion Management in the Workplace , 2005 .

[4]  Judith A. Hall,et al.  Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: a meta-analysis. , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[5]  David Matsumoto,et al.  Development and validation of a measure of display rule knowledge: the display rule assessment inventory. , 2005, Emotion.

[6]  C. Izard.  Basic emotions, relations among emotions, and emotion-cognition relations. , 1992, Psychological review.

[7]  K. Paerregaard.  The Show Must Go On , 2010 .

[8]  D. Matsumoto.  Cultural similarities and differences in display rules , 1990 .

[9]  W. Gerrod Parrott,et al.  Beyond hedonism: Motives for inhibiting good moods and for maintaining bad moods. , 1993 .

[10]  N. Frijda,et al.  Facial expression and modes of action readiness , 1997 .

[11]  L. Tiedens,et al.  Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[12]  J. P. Morgan,et al.  Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook , 2005, Technometrics.

[13]  John Schaubroeck,et al.  Antecedents of workplace emotional labor dimensions and moderators of their effects on physical symptoms , 2000 .

[14]  A. Hochschild,et al.  The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. , 1985 .

[15]  Raymond T. Lee,et al.  Testing a conservation of resources model of the dynamics of emotional labor. , 2002, Journal of occupational health psychology.

[16]  Dieter Zapf,et al.  It's not only clients: Studying emotion work with clients and co-workers with an event-sampling approach , 2005 .

[17]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  WHEN 'THE SHOW MUST GO ON': SURFACE ACTING AND DEEP ACTING AS DETERMINANTS OF EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND PEER-RATED SERVICE DELIVERY , 2003 .

[18]  James M. Diefendorff,et al.  Understanding the emotional labor process: A control theory perspective. , 2003 .

[19]  Cynthia D. Fisher,et al.  Affective events - emotions matrix: a classification of work events and associated emotions , 1998 .

[20]  Anat Rafaeli,et al.  Busy stores and demanding customers: How do they affect the display of positive emotion? , 1990 .

[21]  Wei-Chi Tsai,et al.  Determinants and consequences of employee displayed positive emotions , 2001 .

[22]  G. Keppel.  Design and analysis: A researcher's handbook, 3rd ed. , 1991 .

[23]  A. Wharton,et al.  MANAGING EMOTIONS ON THE JOB AND AT HOME: UNDERSTANDING THE CONSEQUENCES OF MULTIPLE EMOTIONAL ROLES , 1993 .

[24]  K. Scherer,et al.  Culture and emotion. , 1997 .

[25]  Christine M. Beckman,et al.  An Alternative to Bureaucratic Impersonality and Emotional Labor: Bounded Emotionality at the Body Shop , 1998 .

[26]  Stéphane Côté,et al.  A Social Interaction Model Of The Effects Of Emotion Regulation On Work Strain , 2005 .

[27]  P. Ekman,et al.  The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior: Categories, Origins, Usage, and Coding , 1969 .

[28]  J. Diefendorff,et al.  Are emotional display rules formal job requirements? Examination of employee and supervisor perceptions , 2006 .

[29]  Blake E. Ashforth,et al.  Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity , 1993 .

[30]  J. Russell.  Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. , 2003, Psychological review.

[31]  H. Uslucan,et al.  The Handbook of Culture and Psychology. , 2003 .

[32]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  Affective States and Traits in the Workplace: Diary and Survey Data from Young Workers , 2002 .

[33]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  Emotion regulation in the workplace: a new way to conceptualize emotional labor. , 2000, Journal of occupational health psychology.

[34]  James M. Diefendorff,et al.  The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labor strategies , 2005 .

[35]  Cary L. Cooper,et al.  Research Companion to Emotion in Organizations , 2010 .

[36]  J. Tropman,et al.  The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling , 1984 .

[37]  John P Trougakos,et al.  Momentary work recovery: The role of within-day work breaks , 2009 .

[38]  Russell Cropanzano,et al.  THE IMPACT OF DISPLAY RULES AND EMOTIONAL LABOR ON PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING AT WORK , 2003 .

[39]  Anat Rafaeli,et al.  Expression of Emotion as Part of the Work Role , 1987 .

[40]  P. Ekman,et al.  Unmasking the face : a guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues , 1975 .

[41]  Alicia A. Grandey,et al.  Emotional labor and burnout: Comparing two perspectives of "people work" , 2002 .

[42]  A. J. Fridlund.  The psychology of facial expression: The new ethology of human facial expressions , 1997 .

[43]  PfefferJeffrey,et al.  Building Organization Theory from First Principles , 2005 .

[44]  J. Diefendorff,et al.  Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[45]  Theresa M. Glomb,et al.  Emotional labor demands and compensating wage differentials. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[46]  J. Fernández-Dols,et al.  Spontaneous facial expressions of happy bowlers and soccer fans , 2003, Cognition & emotion.

[47]  M. Clark,et al.  Some thoughts and findings on self-presentation of emotions in relationships. , 1996 .

[48]  K. Locke.  Status and solidarity in social comparison: agentic and communal values and vertical and horizontal directions. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[49]  P. Pelzer.  Essai Contempt and Organization: Present in Practice — Ignored by Research? , 2005 .

[50]  D. Matsumoto.  Ethnic differences in affect intensity, emotion judgments, display rule attitudes, and self-reported emotional expression in an American sample , 1993 .

[51]  B. Gutek,et al.  Distinguishing between service relationships and encounters , 1999 .

[52]  T. A. Wright,et al.  The role of "happiness" in organizational research: Past, present and future directions. , 2004 .

[53]  D. Matsumoto,et al.  The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat: spontaneous expressions of medal winners of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. , 2006, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[54]  Marianne LaFrance,et al.  License or Obligation to Smile: The Effect of Power and Sex on Amount and Type of Smiling , 1998 .

[55]  P. Ekman.  Facial expression and emotion. , 1993, The American psychologist.