Paul Gibbons

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Articles on leadership, philosophy, psychology, management, fatherhood, spirituality and change.

Emotions, Work and Well-Being
12 January, 1999
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................................... 2
THEORIES AND DEFINITIONS ........................................................................................................... 3
AFFECT, MOODS AND WELL-BEING........................................................................................................... 4
WORK CONDITIONS .................................................................................................................................. 4
TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR MOTHER................................................................................... 5
FEEDBACK / INSTINCT THEORIES .............................................................................................................. 5
PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES..................................................................................................................... 5
MOOD DYNAMICS..................................................................................................................................... 6
I THINK THEREFORE I FEEL COGNITION AND EMOTION................................................... 7
HOW COGNITION INFLUENCES EMOTION APPRAISAL THEORY................................................................ 7
HOW EMOTIONS AND MOODS INFLUENCE COGNITION............................................................................... 7
FEEL THE DIFFERENCE INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES............................................................. 8
I DONT FEEL LIKE IT MOTIVATION AND EMOTION............................................................. 9
BETWEEN YOU AND ME SOCIAL / INTERPERSONAL THEORIES...................................... 10
SOCIAL PROCESSES AT WORK IMPACT WELL-BEING................................................................................ 10
SOCIAL SUPPORT .................................................................................................................................... 11
WELL-BEING AFFECTS SOCIAL PROCESSES AT WORK.............................................................................. 11
HAVE A NICE DAY! INSTITUTIONAL AND CULTURAL THEORIES ................................... 11
EXPLICIT DEMANDS - DISPLAY AND FEELING RULES............................................................................... 11
IMPLICIT AND CULTURAL DEMANDS....................................................................................................... 12
HISTORY OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION.................................................................................................... 12
THE EFFECT OF EMOTIONAL LABOUR AND REPRESSION ON WELL-BEING AT WORK................................. 12
HOW DO YOU FEEL? REPRESSION AND EMOTION MANAGEMENT................................ 13
CONCLUSION - STRESS MODELS, THEORIES OF EMOTION AND WELL-BEING............. 14
PRACTICAL MATTERS ............................................................................................................................. 15
PRIMARY REFERENCES.................................................................................................................... 17
SECONDARY REFERENCES.............................................................................................................. 17

Introduction
Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat. Human beings, one feels,
ought to be, butare not. (Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness)

Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous to me
(Ecclesiastes)

What would a theory which helped us to understand the reciprocal relationship
between work conditions and well-being
1
look like?

We might expect it to help us understand and eventually predict how, when and why
work conditions influence well-being and vice/versa (Briner). We might, at least,
expect a conceptual definition of well-being that explains what the components are
and how they are interrelated. Our definition informs our theory and even,
sometimes, becomes a substitute for it: What passes for theory in psychology is often
little more than definition (Averill, 1990). Moreover, we currently have a little less
than a definition. Certainly, well-being has affective and evaluative components
(Diener, 1984), but I believe there are many components missing, not to mention a
view of how they interact with each other to produce well-being.

I believe that well-being can be more correctly and usefully be conceived of as having
at least some of the following features:
a social component, that is, interactions with others help generate how we feel,
and our culture helps us make sense of what we feel;
a volitional (or motivational) component; our will, our drives, and our progress
toward our goals influences our well-being;
conscious and unconscious meta-cognitive and self-regulatory processes, that
try to make sense of our environment and regulate it.

I also believe it is impossible to define well-being without making certain predictions
about how well-being arises. If we say well-being contains evaluative and affective
components, then there must be evaluative and affective processes at work. The fact
that well being is dynamic and has elements each of which can be conceived of as
processes, points, in my view, towards a new conceptualisation of well-being as a
process, rather than a state. That process is composed of affective, evaluative, social,
volitional, and self-regulatory processes by which we make sense (cf. Weicks

1
I will be talking primarily about psychological well-being, and not physical well-being although I will reference physical well-
being at times.
sensemaking
2
, 1995) of and create our environment. In addition, these processes
are interdependent: specifically, what we feel influences our thinking, our social
milieu and our volition, and gives us information that is used to regulate the self. In
parallel, these processes help to create how we feel.


Theories of emotion provide a richer insight into how our well-being emerges
from our interaction with our world. They link together the social, appraisal,
volitional and self-regulatory processes which reciprocally influence our well-
being. Stress models give emotion a back seat and treat emotions and moods as
nuisance factors, moderating, or dependent variables. This severely limits stress
models usefulness and explanatory power.

In this essay, I will describe how the affective processes are intertwined with the
other processes (social, evaluation, volition, and self-regulation) by examining
theories of emotion. In each section, I will then describe how the interaction between
affective processes and these other processes influences work conditions helps us
understand the relationship between work conditions and well-being.

Here is the structure of what is to come:

Theories and definitions What kinds of theories of emotion are there? What does
the term work conditions mean?
Tell me more about your mother How do physiological, instinctive and
psychodynamic theories of emotion help us understand the relationship between work
and well-being?
I think therefore I feel How do thinking and feeling interact to help us understand
the relationship between work and well-being?
Feel the difference How important are individual differences to this analysis?
I dont feel like it What do theories of emotion tell us about motivation at work?
Between you and me What interpersonal-social processes at work are important in
affective and well-being processes?
Have a nice day! What do cultural and institutional theories of emotion contribute?
How are you feeling? Which ideas from emotional regulation literature explain
how well-being might be regulated?
Stress models, theories of emotion and well-being? Concluding remarks

There is enough material here for a sizeable book, or several books. I will necessarily
have to skip some theories of emotion, skimp on critical analysis of the theories of
emotion, and only discuss in passing how the relationship between work conditions
and well-being is influenced by affective processes. In particular, my criticism of
stress models will be limited to a few specific paragraphs, but I will try to contrast
those models with theories of emotion along the way.

Theories and definitions

2
Sensemaking is a process that is identity constructive, retrospective, enactive, social, ongoing, focussed on cues, and driven by
plausibility.
It is interesting that in a 1000-page introductory text on psychology, the material on
emotions takes up 15 pages and is in a chapter called Motivation and Emotion.
Emotion research is, or certainly has been, a second-class citizen in some
psychologists eyes! Still there are many theories to choose from, including some
from other disciplines: physiology, psychotherapy, sociology, and cultural
anthropology. What many of these theories share is the idea that four factors are
involved in the intrapsychic experience of emotion: appraisal, action, activation and
expression (Parkinson, 1995). Parkinson then adds social, cultural and representation
factors to the intrapsychic experience to produce his overview of emotion theory.

Affect
3
, moods and well-being
The relationship between moods and emotions is not a straightforward one. Negative
moods
4
mean that one is more likely to experience and express negative emotions,
and persistent hassles can create negative moods (Parkinson, 1996: 9). In this essay,
for the sake of brevity, I will be relying on the strength of this link and will not restate
this assumption each time, although it may not be globally true.

The relationship between affect and well-being is the $64,000 question. I suggest that
not all affective changes are linked to a change in well-being, but that all changes in
well-being are accompanied by a change in affect. I can get angry with another
driver, but do not relate that to a change in my well-being. Moods seem more related
to well-being, but not every grumpy mood entails a change in my global well-being.
It seems to me that the informational content of a mood change, when coupled with
global negative evaluations, forecasts of negative outcomes, social expectations that
things should be different, and decreases in motivation and energy, combines in
various ways and characterise negative changes in well-being. Thus, lowered well-
being is associated with negative moods but not, as we shall see later, when divorced
from cognitive, social, self-regulatory and motivational processes.

Work conditions
Work conditions
5
can be conceived of in a myriad of ways. There can be objective
conditions
6
, such as hours worked, and effort extended, to psychological work

3
Affect can either be thought of as a super-classification, encompassing both, or as a more primitive, physiological type of
emotion (Batson, 1990). In this essay, I will use the former definition of affect, and sometimes even use affect and emotion
interchangeably.
4
Parkinson et al. (p. 8) point out several dimensions along which moods and emotions may be contrasted: time span, function,
intensity, directedness, causation, and, time pattern. But there are clearly links. The authors are quick to point out that there are
differences and overlaps: for example, some moods such as depression and anxiety, especially when close to clinical levels, can
be as intense as emotions.
5
I would like to avoid the kind of dualism that separates the individual from the work conditions they help create and which
create their experience, affective or otherwise. To talk about a reciprocal relationship implies that the individual is not part of the
work conditions a distinction that is not distinct! However, research in emotion has been conducted from the premise that these
are distinct and reducible to dependent and independent variables, so it is not always easy to relate these back to transactional or
process views of events.
6 Ideally, we would like to understand the relationship between objective work conditions and well-being. That way, we could
alter the facts of organisational life that impact well-being. However, we often, particularly in stress research, study subjective
conditions such as those proposed by Hackman and Oldman (1976). For the purposes
of this essay, I will be thinking about work along the following dimensions:
Outcomes how motivation and performance might be influenced by well-being.
Relationships how relationships at work might be influenced by well-being.
Processes how perception and problem solving might be influenced by well-
being.

Having defined these key terms, I will now turn to some theories of emotion and show
how theories emotion provide fundamental links between well-being and work
conditions.

Tell me more about your mother
We dont weep because we feel sorrow; we feel sorrow because we weep (William
James, 1890)

In this section, I will give brief accounts of some early theories of emotion which are
still considered to have relevance today, and then describe their importance to well-
being at work.
Feedback / instinct theories
The above quotation from James suggests that our emotional experience is derived
from our perception of bodily changes. For James, the basis of emotional reactions
was thought to be instinctive or based on laws of habit. Schachter and Singers
famous research (1964) artificially induced arousal with epinephrine, and then
monitored emotional reactions during various social situations. They argued that
emotions are the effect of attributions we make in situations that we conceive as
having emotional relevance. Other researchers (Lorenz/ Tinbergen, in Fromm, 1977)
relate our aggressive / territorial nature to analogous behavior in animals, explaining
mans hostility through his evolutionary roots.

Feedback and instinct theories of emotion, with their emphasis on emotions as
dependent variables in biological systems, help explain the link between events,
emotional reactions to events, and the physiological changes that accompany the
emotions. Stress models, on the other hand, do not provide as useful an
explanation, as emotion theory does, for the link between perception of events
and the physiological changes.
Psychodynamic theories
Much of the work on emotion management is done within the counselling and
psychotherapeutic communities. Theories from these disciplines are, on the whole,

work-conditions: how people perceive the facts of their work situation. The problem is this: can human beings distinguish
their perceptions of the facts of a situation from their appraisals and feelings about them? Not to a great extent I expect. In this
essay I will always treat work conditions as a subjective, enacted, socially constructed reality (Weick, 1995).
not subject to the same sort of verification to which traditional experimental
psychologists lay claim, and hence are deemed unscientific by this learned
community. However, as one modern emotion theorist puts it: the emotion
schemas, with their multiple subsymbolic and symbolic non-verbal components, begin
to develop in organised form from the beginning of life, long before the onset of
language (Pennebaker, 1995: 119)

Key relevant themes from this body of knowledge include:
Existence of an unconscious mind with some elemental desires (sexual and self-
preservation) which are repressed by the conscious mind as a result of
socialisation. (Freud, in De Board, 1978)
Phenomena of transference, whereby previous emotional schemas are re-
experienced in current situations leading to stronger or inappropriate reactions
than normal (Fromm, 1977)
Childhood trauma from the sometimes natural evolution of the relationships with
primary care-givers leads to adult depression, anxiety and neuroses (Klein, in De
Board, 1978)
Dynamic phenomena of dependence, pairing and fight/ flight govern emotions and
behavior in groups (Bion, in DeBoard, 1978)

The assumptions of much of this school are that emotional repression is a bad thing,
both in early life, and in adulthood. The hydraulic model (Fromm, 1977) suggests
that we require energy to repress emotions which then build up harmfully. When we
examine cultural theories of emotion, we will return to causes of emotional repression
in todays families, organisations and societies.

Psychodynamic theories suggest that emotional reactions to stimuli may result from transference
from earlier (often infancy and childhood) events. Transference can yield disproportionate
reactions that a) confound the relationship between objective conditions and emotional and
physical reactions, and b) damage existing relationships by bringing ancient emotional and
behavioral scripts to bear on them. Stress models rely on individual differences to capture a), but
do not as often discuss how strains impact work conditions. In addition, when psychodynamic
and instinctive models are taken together, they tend to suggest also that humans have less (at
least short-term) control over their moods and emotions than they might desire.
Mood dynamics
Heady & Wearings (in Parkinson, 1995, p.107) dynamic equilibrium model suggest that stable
personal characteristics predispose people to similar life experiences and to fairly stable equilibrium
levels of well-being. Other researchers (p. 109) found that baseline mood levels tend to reassert
themselves quickly following both positive (the lottery!) and negative life events. Furthermore, mood
follows hourly (morningness), daily (circadian) and weekly rhythms (p. 117). Together, these findings
paint a picture of mood varying cyclically around an equilibrium level.

The implications for well-being at work are that work conditions may influence long-term well-
being less than stress models might suggest. Moreover, taking Heady & Wearing a step further:
through our dispositional, emotional make-up, we are predisposed to select and create our roles
and relationships at work.

I think therefore I feel Cognition and emotion
I will now turn to theories that link cognitive appraisal and evaluation processes with
affective processes, and discuss how these theories influence well-being at work. It
should be noted, ab initio, that the relationship between appraisals of work conditions
and emotions is not a one-way street, nor are appraisal and emotions exclusive
phenomena. Emotionally-laden judgements, like feeling appreciated are products
of complex interplay between the two processes.
How cognition influences emotion appraisal theory
According to Lazarus (1984), appraisal is the critical factor that initiates, sustains and
differentiates emotion. Personal significance of experience is central to this theory: an
event must be motivationally relevant for it to generate an emotional experience. This
conclusion has been examined experimentally by manipulation of affect, study of
personality differences, collection of reports of appraisals, and study of emotional
reactions to short stories. (Parkinson, 1996, p.41) Parkinson goes on to criticise, not
the research, but the claims appraisal researchers make based on the evidence they
gather. He claims that the links demonstrated between emotion and appraisal are
links between representations of emotion and appraisal, and, as I claimed earlier,
our representations of events cannot so easily be distinguished from our appraisals of
them. Levental & Scherer (1987) usefully add to the conceptualisation of appraisal,
positing three different types: expressive-motor, schematic, and conceptual
(somewhat in order of increasing consciousness and post-stimulus time delay). The
implication of Leventhal & Scherers work, as with instinctive and psychodynamic
theories, is that we may not have as much control over our emotional experience -
especially our initial experience as we would like. In addition, the work suggests
that different types of cognitive processes may be linked to the social and
physiological processes that govern experience and expression of emotion. This
complex appraisal process explains why the fear we feel on a roller-coaster can be
experienced as excitement.

This suggests also that the relationship between stressors and strains can be
moderated by conceptual processing, leading to healthy abstraction of emotional
events (Bucci, 1995), or cognitive reformulation (as in Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy). The importance of meta-cognition in mood management is an
implication of this theory.
How emotions and moods influence cognition
Our emotions help decide what we focus on and perceive, what we remember, how
we solve problems and what actions we take. The processes by which this happens
may be either conscious or unconscious. Parkinson et al. (1996) say the tendency of
mood to push psychological operations into line with its evaluative implications is
known as the mood-congruence effect although [it] is by no means a pervasive
phenomenon.

Key findings from the literature include:
PA,
7
say Isen and Baron (1991), is linked to positive changes in helping behavior,
recall, decision making, creativity
8
, and reduces overt aggression. These effects at
the organisational level show influences on bargaining behaviors, conflict modes,
evaluations and appraisals, and task perception and satisfaction.
Unpleasant affect tends to produce analytic, systematic reasoning, while pleasant affect usually
leads to heuristic, divergent processing (Schwarz & Bless, in Parkinson, 1996: 74).
Emotions and moods also covey important information. We may be appraising
situations below a conscious level, and a change in emotion / mood state can bring
these situations to our attention.
Daniels (1999) has related affect to strategic decision making in organisations, and
specifically discusses the influence of affect congruence, environmental focus and
problem solving strategies.
Forgas (1998) has related positive mood states to an increase in the Fundamental
Attribution Error.

So rather than being a dependent variable, as in stress models, emotions impact and are
impacted by our appraisals of situations. Directly, and through the appraisal process, emotions
determine our view of events and how we handle them. Stress models separate appraisals of
work conditions from the well-being response in a linear causal way. The process view of well-
being emphasises the reciprocal nature of the relationship and sees the two as interdependent.
Emotionally-laden judgements are an example of a combined emotive / evaluative phenomenon.
Feel the difference Individual differences
Stress models and theories of emotion treat individual differences differently.
Generally, stress models treat them as moderators that impact the direct relationship
between stressors and strains. Implicitly, so do some emotion researchers. For
example, DeNeve & Cooper (1998) performed a meta-analysis comparing 137
individual differences with subjective well-being. They found that: traits that
focus on making attributions in a healthy fashion may be the most important [as
do] factors that focus on enhancing personal relationships and success.


7
Isen and Baron define PA differently as pleasant feelings induced by commonplace events or circumstances, rather than
arousal.
8
These findings were largely based on artificially induced changes in affect, and might not be generalisable to in vivo PA.
There is an ongoing heated debate about how Negative Affectivity impacts stressor-
strain relationships, accompanied by different statistical techniques for stripping out
NA, and lots of reanalysis of others results. (Burke et al., 1993; Jex & Beehr, 1991)
This considerable methodological debate seems rather pedantic when there are still
major theoretical and conceptual considerations outstanding. Heady & Wearings (in
Parkinson, 1995: p.107) research suggests that, to some extent, individual differences
are a persons well-being, and not a factor which impacts it. This conclusion is
supported by the research from the job satisfaction camp: Arvey et al (1989) found, by
studying monozygotic twins reared apart, that heredity was a significant predictor of
job satisfaction. In addition, Judge et al. (1998) have recently shown that dispositional
core self-evaluations (self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism)
are linked to perceptions of work characteristics, job satisfaction and life satisfaction.
The view that well-being is a semi-stable characteristic is at odds with the essential
philosophy of the stress school. That is, that our psychological and physical well-
being is constantly beset by noxious stimuli which individual differences and
coping mechanisms allow us to deal with.

So individual differences not only predispose individuals to perceive their
environments differently, but also predispose those individuals to experience
certain affective states, with all the concomitant impact on perception, cognition,
social behavior, and motivation. This finding suggests that individual differences
create environments as much as are created by them, and are much more at the
core of well-being than stress models treatment of individual differences as a
moderating variable would suggest.

I dont feel like it Motivation and emotion
In this section, I will discuss briefly the links between volition, motivation and affect,
and how they relate to well-being at work. There are a number of key ideas which
suggest the importance of these processes to well-being. Reversal theory, with its
notion of telic and para-telic theories, suggests that goal achievement, or progress
towards goal achievement can produce positive emotion (Apter, 1989). Maslow
(1954) maintains that realisation of our higher needs (e.g. self-actualisation) is
essential to self-fulfilment. Czikszentmihalyi (1992) suggests that a flow (a state of
absorption and deep satisfaction) will be achieved when our skills are maximally
utilised and we are maximally challenged. (Note: this is somewhat at odd with the
stress model view that might use the word challenge to describe a stressor.)

For most people, work goals are an important part of their overall goal structure, and
Czikszentmihalyis research found that work experiences, overall, produced more
flow states than those outside work. These positive influences on well-being are
ignored by stress models, as the latter focus on well-being as the absence of
stressors.

Other researchers have demonstrated the link between motivation and affect. George
& Brief (1996) propose that emotions help determine which possible self is focused
on motivationally and that positive moods impact both distal and proximal work
motivation. Kuhl (in Kanfer & Heggestad 1997) cites the importance of emotion
control in maintaining on-task attention and efforts.

So given that emotions and moods are important regulators of motivation, and that
positive feelings are related to challenging tasks, goal progress and goal fulfilment,
my earlier claim that volitional / motivational processes are an important part of well-
being seems justified; that is, if you will permit the idea that motivational processes
are impacted by the types and extent of emotion/ mood effects that we are discussing.

Again, stress models:
do not explain the link between a stressor and motivation (and they would always propose an
inverse relationship),
do not incorporate motivational processes,
ignore how work conditions can create positive affective experiences (and of
course the reverse); and,
see challenges as threats rather than a potential source of fulfilment.
If we accept that motivation and performance are linked, then stress models are
missing an important way of relating work conditions to well-being.

Between you and me Social / interpersonal theories
Parkinsons excellent book Ideas and Realities of Emotion (1996) has, as one of its
central themes, the concept that emotion cannot be conceived of and studied as an
entirely intrapsychic event, even though most research in the field seems to rely on
that assumption. Emotions are not inside waiting for expression in the social world.
Rather, emotion is socially learned, and expression of emotion is communication, a
means of making claims about personal or social identity. In getting angry, we
suggest that a transgression has occurred; by expressing love, we are defining and
redefining a relationship. By emotional expression, social relationships are shaped,
social situations defined, and focus on aspects of the social situation is highlighted. In
other words, an extremely large class of human emotions results from real,
anticipated, imagined or recollected outcomes of social relationships (Kemper, in
Parkinson, p. 182). The concepts of emotional contagion and reciprocity suggest that
other primary initiators of emotional experience are the emotional displays of others:
smile and the world smiles with you.

Social processes at work impact well-being
Here are only some of the many ways in which social processes impact well-being at
work:
Our appraisals of work-conditions are largely dictated by organisational norms,
such as how much effort is extended (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1949)
Well-being is, to some extent, socially constructed,. Our expectations of how we
should feel at work are socially created (i.e. a struggle Protestant Work Ethic, or
a source of fulfilment Quality of Working Life)
Emotional contagion means that we can pick up the emotions of others
(Parkinson, 1995)
Work satisfaction has an important social component and good work relationships,
I assert, are essential to well-being.

With the exception of social coping strategies, social processes are subsumed under
the rubric of work conditions in stress models. They do not, apart from coping
recovery from stress, predict that social relationships at work can positively impact
well-being. The models assume an objective reality rather than a socially created one,
and operate only at the individual level of analysis. Role ambiguity, overload, and
conflict (key stressors) are to a great extent the products of social exchange, or lack
thereof.
Social support
There has been much examination of the role of social support in mediating
organisational stress. The results of this research are mixed: although these studies
provide suggestive evidence that social support ameliorates the impact of life stress,
serious methodological problems make such results difficult to interpret (Kessler et
al, 1985, p.543). The social support research seems embedded in the assumption that
emotion is an intrapsychic event waiting to find expression in the social world
(Parkinson, p. 169) and social support is seen as a buffer or mediator of the stress
response. But given the above conceptualisation of emotion as a social phenomenon,
testing of research hypotheses that ignore the role of social factors in creating and
sustaining emotional experience might account for the mixed results found.
Well-being affects social processes at work
How we feel and how we express our emotions impacts our relationships, social
processes at work and our performance with external and internal customers.
Resentment and extreme conflict are clearly damaging (the relationship between
conflict and group performance is a complex one). Trust and feeling appreciated are
linked to healthy organisational climate, which is linked to innovation and
performance (Ekvall, 1983). Emotional arousal is a likely factor in our level of
involvement in our work. Positive affect is related to a number of prosocial and
citizenship behaviors (Isen & Baron, 1991).

So, in summary, emotional and social processes are inextricably linked to the
creation of our work environment, and our well-being is substantially a product
of the social-emotional processes that are our relationships. Stress models ignore
the extent to which both work conditions and well-being are social phenomena,
and in doing so, severely limit their explanatory power.
Have a nice day! Institutional and cultural theories
Explicit demands - display and feeling rules
Parkinson makes the point that not only are emotions things done actively to
influence others and in the interest of self-presentation and to make identity
claims, but that these acts are both culturally and institutionally constrained. There
are both display rules, such as flight attendants smiling at passengers, and feeling
rules, such as care about your customers (Hochschild, 1983). Hochschild makes
the claim that emotional manipulations influence the internal experience of emotion
and that faking is deleterious to well-being. This claim seems based on the
commonsense assumption that there is a private, internal emotional experience which
is untouched by the social world, that one can distinguish the real emotion from the
acted one. (Although a social emotion theorist, Hochschild seems to have the view
that real emotions are intrapsychic phenomena.)
Implicit and cultural demands
Emotional labour is not confined to explicit demands. At work, lawyers and
management consultants are expected to be serious and businesslike. Whatever
that means, it suggests a limited range of emotional expression. At another, deeper
level in our culture, there are norms which make it acceptable for men to display mild
anger, but much less acceptable to display grief. As Newton (1997) puts it: street
catharsis is still associated with lunacy and work catharsis may cost you your job.
Often, emotional distance is concretized: physical and social structures restrain us
from expressing emotions: the distance we have from an employer who is making us
redundant or from government institutions imposing their will.
History of emotional expression
Emotions are not purely given by todays culture. Our norms of emotional expression
have evolved historically. Newton describes the evolution of courtly society with its
prescribed methods of self-expression and the monopolisation of the means of
violence as power became concentrated in the hands of a few monarchs. He criticises
Hochschild for ahistoricism: comparing the emotional labour of today with an
idealised pre-industrial self (Rousseaus Noble Savage). In French and English court
society, courtiers performed emotional labour almost as a matter of course.
Finally, he draws on the work of Morgan (1994) on bourgeoise etiquette:

The drawing room was designed to produce harmony and effect aided by good manners and
the emotionally repressive quality known as tact then the emotion curbing conventions of
etiquette were gradually diffused amongst the developing middle classes
.
So what does this tell us about the reciprocal relationships between well-being and
work conditions?
The effect of emotional labour and repression on well-being at work
In a everyday analysis, smiling at someone (faking) can precipitate a smile from them.
They feel valued and may smile back, or they may smile at others, thus making them
feel valued. There is also evidence that emotional expression can be an antecedent to
emotional experience (Parkinson, 1995: 139). The underlying assumption in most
cultural and institutional theories of emotion that emotional repression and emotional
labour are BAD THINGS. The research on repression (see below) suggests that this
might be the case; the research evidence on emotional labour is still mixed. I have
heard anecdotally that deep acting is emotionally draining for actors, and emotional
health evidence from psychotherapists may suggest that their emotional labour is
similarly taxing (but there are other explanations!)

Theories of emotion are not yet developed enough to explain completely the link
between emotional experience, expression, and behavior, although Parkinson did find
a relationship between expression control, emotional management, and well-being in
a cross-sectional study of trainee hairdressers. Parkinson associated these findings
with an ability to assimilate the expressive performance into their own identity, and to
view their performance as undeceptive. The social work identity and the emotional
expressiveness become one and emotional expressiveness no doubt inclines
individuals toward certain jobs in the first place.

Stress models might treat emotional labour and repression as stressors, and that
seems to be an implicit view of social emotions theorists (although they might not
choose the same word). This implies a separation of experience (well-being)
from expression that research shows is not so clearcut.

How do you feel? Repression and emotion management
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
William Blake, Songs of Experience

In popular culture, there is a dichotomy of opinion on coping with emotional distress.
One school would have us keep busy (i.e. avoid reflecting or thinking about the
upsetting incident), while another would have us share it or talk it through. Meta-
analyses of therapy outcomes suggest that talking through ones experiences and
feelings with a professional leads to improvements in psychological and physical
well-being (Pennebaker, 1995, p.1). While the outcomes of rumination and social
sharing of emotional distress are neutral to mixed respectively (Rim, 1995).
Borkovec et al (1995) see worry (rumination) and disclosure as opposite sides of the
same coin, the first detrimental to psychological well-being, the latter beneficial.

In a similar vein, Mahoney (1995) states that the capacity to experience and express intense affect
appears to be important to psychophysical well-being. Salovey et al. (1995) define emotional
intelligence (EI) as skills with which individuals identify their feelings and the feelings of others,
regulate these feelings, and use the information provided to motivate adaptive social behaviours.
Mayer & Gaschke (1988) define meta-mood experience as an ongoing self-regulatory process
characterised by attention to, clarity and repair of feelings. Mayer & Gaschke also experimentally
relate Clarity (the ability to distinguish among feelings) to improvements in affective well-being.
These findings all point to awareness, clarity and expression of emotions as beneficial to well-being.

Can this view, that emotions require expression, be reconciled with the fact that an
angry outburst can do much damage to a relationship? Not easily. In a social world
where others are responsible for our emotions (work is driving me nuts, you make
me angry, or he really hurt me), I am angry carries with it an implicit judgement
(shaming) of the other (you are wrong). Expression can then lead to escalation
rather than diffusion of harmful emotions. The counselling/ personal growth world
provides a perspective in which the individual expresses emotions responsibly as their
own (the product of whatever scripts, transference, needs, or insecurities they may
posses). In this world, emotional expression is sharing of a personal, self-created
reality and the cornerstone of a healthy relationship. Again, this is a different
perspective and a learned skill.

The counselling world would have us believe that the ability of the consciousness to
oversee thoughts and feelings and to own our thoughts and feelings rather than be
owned by them is a good thing. This meta-processing tries to utilise information
from negative emotions to understand which learned scripts are triggered, which
goals/expectations are being violated, and what instincts/ needs are threatened. The
events can then cognitively reformulated in ways that serve the individual. This
thinking is also partly the basis of the emotional intelligence school, and sounds like
a good thing to be able to do. It is however, something of a learned skill to be able to
make the necessary abstractions from concrete experience, and to use them
productively.

Stress, in common usage, is not only a representation of the effects: it also contains
attributions about the cause. The cause is always out there. The ethos of the stress
world is one which makes people victims of circumstances beyond their control (they
dont choose their jobs, create their relationships, and are not driven by fears and
insecurities?). They then become heroes, battling away against the stressors that
besiege them. The stressed executive is a powerful cultural symbol. I assert that
many people derive much of their identity from this culturally created role. The
symbol carries with it associations with power, importance, and success that are so
much part of todays managerial culture. Are you busy? is a standard lift-greeting
in many high-flying jobs, the implication being that being busy is a GOOD THING.
(No one ever says no!)

Greater consciousness of the personal payoffs that individuals get from the stress
concept, and the way in which their choices and behaviors create stressful
environments is perhaps the most powerful stress-intervention that can be made.

Conclusion - Stress models, theories of emotion and well-
being
For all the happiness man can gain is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain. (John Dryden)

Here is a summary of some of my key points:
Well-being can usefully be thought of as a process, composed of social,
emotional, volitional, physiological, and meta-cognitive processes. In contract to
a reductionist cause and effect view, these processes are interdependent.
Well-being, partly through our moods and emotions, creates our environment
while being influenced by it.
Stress models deal only with extreme, negative affect. Positive and subtler
emotions are important too.
Instinct and transference are important causes of emotional reactions. Emotions
may provide the link between perception and physiology.
Stress models ignore that moods impact our cognitive processing, and that some
appraisals are complex combinations of cognition and emotion. The impact on the
self (efficacy, esteem) is key.
Complex conceptual processing is an important type of appraisal that allows
healthy abstraction and reformulation of emotional events.
Individual differences may predispose us to certain life-events and to stable levels
of well-being
Well-being, our will and motivations are linked. Stress models ignore positive
emotional impact of challenges.
Well-being is socially created. There are norms about how much is expected
sometimes work is just a paycheck. Our level of well-being impacts our social
world through relationships.
Our emotional expression is repressed or demanded by cultural and institutional
factors.
Emotional repression is very probably a bad thing. Counselling helps, worrying
doesnt.
Emotion management skills can be learned. They sometimes require a shift in
emotional worldview to implement.
The stress view contains big identity payoffs in todays world.

Practical matters
Some of this is not good news for those who would use current theorising on emotion
to improve either individual or collective well-being at work. The instinctive view
and the trait view would have us believe that our emotions have significant
physiological or genetic determinants. The cultural, historical and institutional views
suggest that our emotional behavior follows pre-set rules, of which we are largely
unaware, and which prescribe how we express emotions and thence alter how we
experience them in ways which are harmful to us. The psychodynamic view suggests
that subconscious, or pre-linguistic processes, that are tough to access and change, can
determine emotional responses. Judge et al.s core evaluations (self-efficacy, self-
esteem, locus of control, and neuroticism) suggest that deep changes to the
relationship to self, others or reality would be required to alter the experience of well-
being.

On the other hand, at the social, cultural and worldview levels there are possibilities.
Healthy expression of emotion at work, understanding emotional labour in its
broadest sense, examining the impact of cultural norms on emotion, reviewing the
emotional victim mentality, looking at what kinds of social support work, looking at
ways to create well-being (rather than ways to recover it), and studying the possible
impact of emotional intelligence or meta-cognition may provide more fertile
opportunities.

Moreover, the view of well-being as a dynamic process which involves a number of
interlinked processes might mean more integrated research. In addition, integrating
research from the non-scientific communities, (counselling, spiritual, and personal
growth) for which well-being has long been a primary concern, might yield the most
interesting results.


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