1. Emotions influence behaviors and attitudes in the workplace. Emotions are brief physiological and psychological responses to situations, while attitudes are longer-term judgments. 2. Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and stress all impact workplace behaviors and performance. High job satisfaction and organizational commitment are associated with better performance and customer satisfaction, while stress can harm health, performance, and increase turnover if not managed. 3. Managing emotions, building positive attitudes, reducing stressors, and developing coping strategies can optimize workplace behaviors and outcomes.

1. WORKPLACE EMOTIONS,
ATTITUDES AND STRESS
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MERVYN MAICO D. ALDANA, FACULTY SHTM

2. EMOTIONS IN THE WORKPLACE

3. EMOTIONS
• Emotions influence almost everything we do in the
workplace.
• Emotions are physiological, behavioral and psychological
episodes experienced towards an object, person, or event
that create a state of readiness.
• These “episodes” are very brief events that typically subside
or occur in waves lasting from milliseconds to a few
minutes.
• Emotions are directed toward someone or something.
• Moods are not directed toward anything in particular and
tend to be longer-term emotional states.

4. EMOTIONS
• Emotions are experiences.
• They represent changes in our physiological (e.g. heartrate, blood pressure),
psychological state (e.g. though process), and behavior (e.g. facial
expressions).
• Most of the emotional reactions are subtle and occur without our awareness.
• In reality, most emotions are fleeting, low-intensity events that influence our
behavior without conscious awareness.
• Emotions put us in a state of readiness.
• Ex. When we get worried, our heart rate and blood pressure increase to make our
body better prepared to engage in a fight or flight.
• Strong emotions also trigger our conscious awareness of a threat or
opportunity in the external environment

5. TYPES OF EMOTIONS
• People experience many emotions as well as
various combinations of emotions.
• All emotions have an associated valence: good or
bad, helpful or harmful, positive or negative.
• Emotions vary in their degree of activation; they
generate different levels of energy or motivational
force within us.

6. ATTITUDES
• Attitudes represent a cluster of beliefs, assessed feelings, and behavioral intentions towards a person,
object or event (called an attitude object).
• Attitudes are judgments, whereas emotions are experiences.
• Attitudes involve conscious logical reasoning, whereas emotions operate as events, usually without our
awareness.
• We experience emotions briefly, whereas our attitude toward someone or something is more stable
over time.

7. MODEL OF EMOTIONS, ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR
• Attitudes could be understood by three cognitive
components: beliefs, feelings, and behavioural
intentions.
• Beliefs—your established perceptions about the
attitude object—what you believe to be true.
• Feelings—your positive or negative evaluations of the
attitude object.
• Behavioural intentions—your motivation to engage in
a particular behaviour with respect to the attitude
object.

8. HOW EMOTIONS INFLUENCE ATTITUDES AND
BEHAVIORS
• Emotions play a central role in forming and changing employee attitudes.
• It begins with perceptions of the world around us. Our brain tags incoming sensory information with
emotional markers based on a quick and imprecise evaluation of whether that information supports or
threatens our innate drives. These markers are automatic and nonconscious emotional responses based
on very thin slices of information.
• The influence of both cognitive reasoning and emotions on attitudes is most apparent when they
disagree with each other. People occasionally experience this mental “tug-of-war”, sensing something
isn’t right even though they can’t think of any logical reason to be concerned.
• This conflicting experience indicates the person’s logical analysis of the situation can’t identify reasons
to support the automatic reaction.

9. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
• Emotions and attitudes usually lead to behavior,
but the opposite sometimes occurs through the
process of Cognitive Dissonance.
• Cognitive Dissonance occurs when we perceive an
inconsistency between out beliefs, feelings, and
behavior. This inconsistency generates emotions
that motivate us to create consistency by changing
one or more of these elements.
• People experience an internal tension because they
want to see themselves as rational creatures, which
requires some alignment of thoughts and actions.

10. REDUCING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
• Changing behavior.
• Changing your beliefs and feelings.

11. MANAGING EMOTIONS AT WORK
• People are expected to manage their emotions in the workplace.
• Emotional Labor is the effort, planning, and control needed to
express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal
transactions. Almost everyone is expected to abide by display rules –
norms requiring us to display specific emotions and to hide our
emotions.
• Emotional labor demands are higher in jobs requiring a variety of
emotions and more intense emotions, as well as in jobs in which
interaction with clients is frequent and longer.

12. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• Emotional Intelligence (EI) are the set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion
in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate oneself and others.
• EI is organized into four dimensions:
• Awareness of own emotions
• Management of own emotions
• Awareness of other’s emotions
• Management of other’s emotions

13. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• Awareness of own emotions – the ability to perceive and understand the meaning of your own emotions.
• Management of own emotions – ability to manage own emotions
• Awareness of other’s emotions – ability to perceive and understand the emotions of other people
• Management of other’s emotions – involves managing people’s emotions – e.g. consoling people who feel sad,
emotionally inspiring team members to complete a class project on time, getting strangers to fell comfortable
working with you, managing dysfunctional emotions among staff who experience conflict with customers or other
employees.
• These four dimensions of EI form a hierarchy. Awareness of own emotions is lowest because you need awareness
in higher levels of emotional intelligence. You can’t manage your own emotions if your don’t know what they are.
• Managing other people’s emotions is the highest level of EI because it requires awareness of our own and other’s
emotions.

14. JOB SATISFACTION
• Job Satisfaction is a person’s evaluation of his or her
job and work context.
• It is an appraisal of the perceived job characteristic,
work environment, and emotional experiences at work.
• Satisfied employees have a favorable evaluation of their
jobs, based on their observations and emotional
experiences.
• Job satisfaction is best viewed as a collection of
attitudes about different aspects of the job and work
content.

15. JOB SATISFACTION AND WORK BEHAVIOR
• Job satisfaction is important to many organizational leaders.
• Many companies carefully monitor job satisfaction and related employee attitudes, and they actively
compete to win best-workplace awards.

16. EXIT-VOICE-LOYALTY-NEGLECT (EVLN) MODEL
• EVLN is a template for organizing and understanding the consequences of job dissatisfaction. It
identifies four ways employees respond to job dissatisfaction.
• Exit – includes leaving the organization, transferring to another work unit, or at least trying to get away from
dissatisfying situation.
• Voice – is any attempt to change, rather than to escape from, the dissatisfying situation.
• Loyalty – employees who respond to dissatisfaction by patiently waiting (suffer in silence)
• Neglect – includes reducing work effort, paying less attention to quality, and increasing absenteeism and
lateness.

17. SATISFACTION AND PERFORMANCE
• OB experts say that there is a moderately positive relationship between job satisfaction and
performance.
• Employees are more productive when they have more positive attitudes toward their job and workplace.
• Dissatisfaction might affect performance only when employees have sufficient control over their job
performance.
• Job performance may cause satisfaction – higher performers receive more rewards and, consequently, are
more satisfied than low-performing employees who receive fewer rewards.

18. JOB SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
• Employees first, customers second.
• It is difficult to keep customers happy if employee morale is low.
• Service Profit Chain – proposes that job satisfaction has a positive effect on customer service, which
flows on to shareholder financial returns.
• Employees are usually in a more positive mood when they feel satisfied with their jobs and working conditions
• Satisfied employees are less likely to quit their jobs, so they have better knowledge and skills to serve clients

19. ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
• Organizational Commitment (affective commitment) – is the employee’s emotional attachment to,
identification with, and involvement in a particular organization. Affective commitment is a person’s
feeling of loyalty to the place where he or she works.
• Continuance Commitment is a calculative attachment to the organization. Employees have high
continuance commitment when they feel bound to remain with the organization because it would be
too costly to quit.

20. CONSEQUENCES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
• Affective commitment can be significant competitive advantage.
• Loyal employees are less likely to quit their jobs and be absent from work.
• They also have higher motivation and organizational citizenship, as well as higher job performance.
• It can also improve customer satisfaction because long-tenure employees have better knowledge of
work practices and because clients like to do business with the same employees.

21. BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
• Ways to build organizational loyalty:
• Justice and support – when organizations fulfill their obligations to employees and abide by humanitarian
values, such as fairness, courtesy, forgiveness, and moral intergrity
• Shared values – when a person identifies with the organization, and employees believe their values are
congruent with the organization’s dominant values
• Trust – positive expectations one person has toward another person in situations involving risk
• Organizational comprehension – how well employees understand the organization, including its strategic
direction, social dynamics, and physical layout
• Employee involvement – employee feel they are part of the organization when they participate in decisions that
guide the organization’s future

22. WORK-RELATED STRESS AND ITS MANAGEMENT
• Stress – described as an adaptive response to a situation perceived as
challenging or threatening to the person’s well-being.
• It is a physiological and psychological condition that prepares us to adapt
to hostile or noxious environmental conditions.
• Our heart rate increases, muscles tighten, breathing speeds up, and
perspiration increases.
• Distress – negative experience, physiological, psychological and behavioral
deviation from healthy functioning
• Eustress – is a necessary part of life, it activates people to achieve goals,
change environments, and succeed in life’s challenges.

23. GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME
• General Adaptation syndrome is a model of stress that consists of three stages: alarm reaction,
resistance, and exhaustion.
• Alarm reaction – when a threat or challenge activates the physiological stress responses
• Resistance – activates various biochemical, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms that give the individual
more energy and engage coping mechanisms to overcome or remove the stress.
• Exhaustion – when we are unable to remove the source of stress or remove ourselves from that source before
becoming too exhausted

24. CONSEQUENCES OF DISTRESS
• Headaches, muscle pain, etc.
• Cardiovascular diseases, strokes, heart attacks, cancer.
• Lower performance, poor decision making, increased workplace accidents and aggressive behavior.
• Absenteeism
• Job Burnout – stress consequence that refers to the process of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and
reduced feelings of personal accomplishment.
• Emotional exhaustion – lack of energy, tiredness, feeling of one’s emotional resources are depleted
• Cynicism – indifferent attitude toward work, emotional detachment, strictly follow rules rather than adapt to
the need of others
• Reduced personal accomplishment – diminished confidence in one’s ability to perform job

25. STRESSORS
• Stressors – include any environmental conditions
that place a physical or emotional demand on a
person.
• Harassment and incivility
• Psychological harassment – repeated hostile or
unwanted conduct, verbal comments, actions,
gestures that undermine n employee’s dignity or
psychological or physical integrity
• Sexual harassment – unwelcome conduct of a sexual
nature that detrimentally affects the work
environment or leads to adverse job related
consequences for its vistims.

26. STRESSORS
• Work Overload
• Low Task Control – when employees lack control over how and when they perform their tasks as well as
lack control over the pace of the work activity.

27. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN STRESS
• People experience stress in different levels when exposed to the same stressor.
• Employee’s physical health
• Coping strategies
• Neuroticism (emotional stability)
• Workaholics – or work addict, is a person who is highly involved in work, feels compelled to work, and has a
low enjoyment of work.

28. MANAGING WORK-RELATED STRESS
• Remove the Stressor
• Flexible and limited work time
• Job sharing
• Telecommuting
• Personal leave
• Child care support

29. MANAGING WORK-RELATED STRESS
• Withdraw from the stressor
• Change stress perceptions
• Control stress consequences
• Receive social support