Our emotional health relies on our ability to identify and process feelings. A repressed or suppressed emotion skews our entire emotional equilibrium, since when we repress one emotion, we repress them all. This, in turn, has dramatic repercussions on our overall health. Buried emotions never really disappear. Play Games: One fun way to introduce, teach, and practice the names of emotions is to play an engaging game with students, such as these emoji card games, matching games, and board game. Teaching Kids Healthy Expression of Emotions. We all feel the full range of emotions. Wherever they are on the happy or sad, engaged or bored, proud or embarrassed, ends of the spectrum, we can help them. The unwanted side effects of negative emotions at work are easy to see: An angry colleague is left alone to work through the anger; a jealous colleague is excluded from office gossip, which is also the source of important office news. But you may be surprised to learn that negative emotions can help a company’s productivity in some cases. NOTE: Person Growth Worksheets will not be used as homework. These are for your use only. Please DO NOT Submit any filled in sheets in Lesson Group. Myth: 'Life is boring without drama and extreme emotions.' Opposing view: Being open to all the different emotions we might be feeling can enrich our inner psychological life. But, acting on acute impulses that result from intense emotions can lead to destructive behavioral consequences that are not good for us in the long run.

1. 32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Skills
2. 32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Techniques
3. 32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Handouts
4. 32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Reliaslearning

Learning Objectives

1. Understand what defines emotions.
2. Identify the different types of emotions people experience.
3. Understand emotion contagion.

Types of Emotions

Financial analysts measure the value of a company in terms of profits and stock. For employees, however, the value of a job is also emotional. The root of the word emotion comes from a French term meaning “to stir up.” And that’s a great place to begin our investigation of emotions at work. More formally, an emotion is defined as a short, intense feeling resulting from some event. Not everyone reacts to the same situation in the same way. For example, a manager’s way of speaking can cause one person to feel motivated, another to feel angry, and a third to feel sad. Emotions can influence whether a person is receptive to advice, whether they quit a job, and how they perform individually or on a team. Of course, as you know, emotions can be positive or negative.

Positive emotions such as joy, love, and surprise result from our reaction to desired events. In the workplace, these events may include achieving a goal or receiving praise from a superior. Individuals experiencing a positive emotion may feel peaceful, content, and calm. A positive feeling generates a sensation of having something you didn’t have before. As a result, it may cause you to feel fulfilled and satisfied. Positive feelings have been shown to dispose a person to optimism, and a positive emotional state can make difficult challenges feel more achievable. This is because being positive can lead to upward positive spirals where your good mood brings about positive outcomes, thereby reinforcing the good mood.

Emotions are also useful for creative tasks, because positive individuals tend to be more creative and open to new ideas. In addition to helping with employee creativity, companies such as Microsoft Corporation often want to understand which features of their products produce not just high ratings for usability but also high emotional ratings. Individuals with strong positive emotional reactions are more likely to use their product and recommend it to others. This is something Apple Inc. has been known for doing well, as their products tend to evoke strong positive emotions and loyalty from their users.

Figure 7.10

By creating products that users feel an emotional reaction to, Apple has revolutionized the way music is experienced.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IPod_Line.png.

Negative emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness can result from undesired events. In the workplace, these events may include not having your opinions heard, a lack of control over your day-to-day environment, and unpleasant interactions with colleagues, customers, and superiors. Negative emotions play a role in the conflict process, with those who can manage their negative emotions finding themselves in fewer conflicts than those who do not.

The unwanted side effects of negative emotions at work are easy to see: An angry colleague is left alone to work through the anger; a jealous colleague is excluded from office gossip, which is also the source of important office news. But you may be surprised to learn that negative emotions can help a company’s productivity in some cases. Anger at another company’s success, for example, can spark a burst of positive effort on behalf of a competitor. Jealousy about another division’s sales figures may inspire a rival division to work harder. While negative emotions can be destructive in the workplace, they can inspire bursts of valuable individual action to change situations that aren’t working the way they should. The key is to promote the positive emotions and work to manage the negative ones so they don’t spread throughout the organization and become the norm.

Emotional Contagion

Both positive and negative emotions can be contagious, with the spillover of negative emotions lasting longer than positive emotions.Linguistics may be clue to emotions, according to Penn State research. As you may have experienced in the past, contagion can be especially salient in a team setting. Research shows that emotions are contagious and that team members affect one another even after accounting for team performance. One explanation for negative emotions’ tendency to linger may be a stronger connection to the fight-or-flight situations people experience. Anger, fear, and suspicion are intentionally unpleasant messages urging us to take action immediately. And to make sure we get the message, these emotions stick around.

Research shows that some people are more susceptible to emotional contagion than others. But in general, when the boss is happy, the staff is happy. We can also imagine how negative emotions can be transferred. Imagine you’re working behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant. Your mood is fine, until a customer argues with you about an order. You argue back. The customer leaves in a huff. Your anger emotions continue, turning into negative feelings that last throughout the day. As you might guess, you are more likely to make mistakes and find ordinary challenges annoying when you’re experiencing negative emotions. Unchecked, your negative emotions can spread to those around you. A negative interaction with one customer can spill over onto interactions with another customer.

OB Toolbox: Practice Changing Your Emotions

32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Skills

Olympic athletes train for peak performance by stimulating their brains to believe they’ve just run a record race. You can do the same thing to experience different moods. By providing your brain with the external stimulus of happiness or sadness, you can create those feelings. Give it a try!

It’s best to practice this when you are feeling relatively calm. To give yourself a neutral starting point, close your eyes and breathe in slowly. Now, release your breath. Open your eyes and smile wide. Allow your eyes to crinkle. Now smile a bit more.

The changes you have consciously made to your expression are signaling your body that a positive event has taken place. How does this affect you emotionally?

Answer these questions to find out:

Do you feel more or less energetic as you smile? More or less calm? More or less optimistic? How does the feeling resulting from your physical changes compare with your feelings a moment before?

Now, let’s try the opposite: Close your eyes and breathe in and out slowly, as detailed above, to clear your “emotional slate.” Then open your eyes. Pull down the corners of your mouth. Open your eyes wide. You have just signaled to your body that something negative has taken place.

Note your feelings using the list above. How do these feelings compare with your feelings of “intentional happiness”?

Now consider this: Dr. Aston Trice of Mary Baldwin College in Virginia found that humor has mood-altering effects. Subjects were given a frustrating task. Then, one-half were shown cartoons. Those who had seen the cartoons overcame their frustration and attacked a new test with renewed enthusiasm and confidence, compared to those subjects who hadn’t had the humorous interlude.

Key Takeaway

Emotions serve many purposes and affect people at work. There are positive and negative emotions, and both can be helpful at motivating us to work harder. Emotions are malleable and they can also be contagious.

Exercises

1. How easy do you think it is to “manage” one’s emotions?
2. Which types of emotions are most socially accepted in the workplace? Why do you think this is?
3. What are factors that affect your emotions?
4. Share an example of either positive or negative emotional contagion. How did it start and stop?
5. What do you do, if anything, to try to change how you are feeling? How effective are your strategies?

Captain Sullenberger Conquers His Emotions

He was 3,000 feet up in the air when the sudden loss of power in his airplane put his life, as well as the lives of 150 other passengers and crew members, in his hands. Both of the engines on flight 1539 had shut down, and his options for a safe landing were limited.

Sully kept flying the plane and alerted the control tower to the situation:

This is Cactus 1539…hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards La Guardia.

When the tower gave him the compass setting and runway for a possible landing, Sullenberger’s extensive experience allowed him to give a calm response:

I’m not sure if we can make any runway…Anything in New Jersey?

32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Techniques

Captain Sullenberger was not just any pilot in a crisis, but a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with 40 years of flight experience. He had served as a flight instructor and the Airline Pilots Association safety chairman. Training had quickened his mental processes in assessing the threat, allowing him to maintain what tower operators later called an “eerie calm.” He knew the capabilities of his plane.

When the tower suggested a runway in New Jersey, Sullenberger calmly replied:

Figure 10.1 Captain Sullenberger and His Plane on the Hudson

Imagine that you are on a plane that you know is going to crash. What emotions would you experience, and how would you respond to them? Would the rush of fear cause you to panic, or could you control your emotions like Captain Sullenberger did, as he calmly calculated the heading, position, thrust, and elevation of the plane, and then landed it on the Hudson River?

Ingrid Taylar – Sully Sullenberger – CC BY 2.0; Dane Deasy – Flight 1549 Crash – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The last communication from Captain Sullenberger to the tower advised of the eventual outcome:

He calmly set the plane down on the water. Passengers reported that the landing was like landing on a rough runway. The crew kept the passengers calm as women, children, and then the rest of the passengers were evacuated onto the boats of the rescue personnel that had quickly arrived. Captain Sullenberger then calmly walked the aisle of the plane to be sure that everyone was out before joining the 150 other rescued survivors (Levin, 2009; National Transportation Safety Board, 2009).

Some called it “grace under pressure,” and others the “miracle on the Hudson.” But psychologists see it as the ultimate in emotion regulation—the ability to control and productively use one’s emotions.

The topic of this chapter is affect, defined as the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is an essential part of the study of psychology because it plays such an important role in everyday life. As we will see, affect guides behavior, helps us make decisions, and has a major impact on our mental and physical health.

The two fundamental components of affect are emotions and motivation. Both of these words have the same underlying Latin root, meaning “to move.” In contrast to cognitive processes that are calm, collected, and frequently rational, emotions and motivations involve arousal, or our experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Because they involve arousal, emotions and motivations are “hot”—they “charge,” “drive,” or “move” our behavior.

When we experience emotions or strong motivations, we feel the experiences. When we become aroused, the sympathetic nervous system provides us with energy to respond to our environment. The liver puts extra sugar into the bloodstream, the heart pumps more blood, our pupils dilate to help us see better, respiration increases, and we begin to perspire to cool the body. The stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released. We experience these responses as arousal.

An emotion is a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our behavior. Whether it is the thrill of a roller-coaster ride that elicits an unexpected scream, the flush of embarrassment that follows a public mistake, or the horror of a potential plane crash that creates an exceptionally brilliant response in a pilot, emotions move our actions. Emotions normally serve an adaptive role: We care for infants because of the love we feel for them, we avoid making a left turn onto a crowded highway because we fear that a speeding truck may hit us, and we are particularly nice to Mandy because we are feeling guilty that we didn’t go to her party. But emotions may also be destructive, such as when a frustrating experience leads us to lash out at others who do not deserve it.

Motivations are closely related to emotions. A motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behavior. Some motivations are biological, such as the motivation for food, water, and sex. But there are a variety of other personal and social motivations that can influence behavior, including the motivations for social approval and acceptance, the motivation to achieve, and the motivation to take, or to avoid taking, risks (Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009). In each case we follow our motivations because they are rewarding. As predicted by basic theories of operant learning, motivations lead us to engage in particular behaviors because doing so makes us feel good.

Motivations are often considered in psychology in terms of drives, which are internal states that are activated when the physiological characteristics of the body are out of balance, and goals, which are desired end states that we strive to attain. Motivation can thus be conceptualized as a series of behavioral responses that lead us to attempt to reduce drives and to attain goals by comparing our current state with a desired end state (Lawrence, Carver, & Scheier, 2002). Like a thermostat on an air conditioner, the body tries to maintain homeostasis, the natural state of the body’s systems, with goals, drives, and arousal in balance. When a drive or goal is aroused—for instance, when we are hungry—the thermostat turns on and we start to behave in a way that attempts to reduce the drive or meet the goal (in this case to seek food). As the body works toward the desired end state, the thermostat continues to check whether or not the end state has been reached. Eventually, the need or goal is satisfied (we eat), and the relevant behaviors are turned off. The body’s thermostat continues to check for homeostasis and is always ready to react to future needs.

In addition to more basic motivations such as hunger, a variety of other personal and social motivations can also be conceptualized in terms of drives or goals. When the goal of studying for an exam is hindered because we take a day off from our schoolwork, we may work harder on our studying on the next day to move us toward our goal. When we are dieting, we may be more likely to have a big binge on a day when the scale says that we have met our prior day’s goals. And when we are lonely, the motivation to be around other people is aroused and we try to socialize. In many, if not most cases, our emotions and motivations operate out of our conscious awareness to guide our behavior (Freud, 1922; Hassin, Bargh, & Zimerman, 2009; Williams, Bargh, Nocera, & Gray, 2009).

We begin this chapter by considering the role of affect on behavior, discussing the most important psychological theories of emotions. Then we will consider how emotions influence our mental and physical health. We will discuss how the experience of long-term stress causes illness, and then turn to research on positive thinking and what has been learned about the beneficial health effects of more positive emotions. Finally, we will review some of the most important human motivations, including the behaviors of eating and sex. The importance of this chapter is not only in helping you gain an understanding the principles of affect but also in helping you discover the important roles that affect plays in our everyday lives, and particularly in our mental and physical health. The study of the interface between affect and physical health—that principle that “everything that is physiological is also psychological”—is a key focus of the branch of psychology known as health psychology. The importance of this topic has made health psychology one of the fastest growing fields in psychology.

References

32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Handouts

Freud, S. (1922). The unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 56(3), 291; Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., & Zimerman, S. (2009). Automatic and flexible: The case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Social Cognition, 27(1), 20–36.

32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Reliaslearning

Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward goal attainment in immediate experience as a determinant of affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 788–802.

Levin, A. (2009, June 9). Experience averts tragedy in Hudson landing. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-08-hudson_N.htm.

Morsella, E., Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Oxford handbook of human action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

National Transportation Safety Board. (2009, June 9). Excerpts of Flight 1549 cockpit communications. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-09-hudson-cockpit-transcript_N.htm

Williams, L. E., Bargh, J. A., Nocera, C. C., & Gray, J. R. (2009). The unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity. Emotion, 9(6), 847–854.