New Research Looks at the Role Emotions Play at Work

Google Scholar counts more than 17,000 studies on regulating emotions in the workplace in the past two years alone. “Workplaces are more emotionally charged given current events, work, and family stressors,” says Allison Gabriel, an associate professor of management at the University of Arizona. A sampling of the latest scholarship on how to keep calm and carry on.

Don’t hide your feelings
Title: “Are Co-Workers Getting Into the Act? An Examination of Emotion Regulation in Co-Worker Exchanges”
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology, December 2019
Summary: Pair your negative emotions with forward-looking positivity, then express that. “We are horrible actors when it comes to faking our emotions,” says Gabriel, a co-author. “All those negative emotions still leak out.”
Title: “Unpacking the ‘Why’ Behind Strategic Emotion Expression at Work: A Narrative Review and Proposed Taxonomy”
Publication: European Management Journal, February 2020
Summary: “We often regulate our emotions to meet other people’s needs,” says co-author Dirk Lindebaum, an organizational psychologist at Grenoble École de Management. “If you suppress emotions, you’re more likely to suffer psychologically.” Instead, ask why you’re doing it.