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When Feelings Go to Work
By Marina Krakovsky
Emotions have a
logic of their own.
Wharton's Sigal
Barsade shows how
feelings play out in
the workplace.
Years ago, shortly before Wharton Management
Associate Professor Sigal Barsade went to graduate school,
she worked in a group that included a curmudgeonly,
crabby coworker. Since Barsade wasn't working closely with
"Crabby," she assumed this woman had no effect on her life.
That is, until Crabby went on vacation.
"The group became a much more sociable and pleasant
place to be," recalls Barsade, an associate professor of management.
"Then, when she returned the next week, everybody
got uptight again. I remember how striking it was. It
wasn't that she was telling us what to do, but just the way she
was in the workplace that was influencing others."
Barsade says that the experience led directly to her research
into "emotional contagion," the transfer of moods
among people in a group. Emotional contagion and other
emotional effects interest Barsade because they help explain
phenomena that, on the surface, may not seem rational.
"There are things that go on that don't seem to make
sense," Barsade says—things like the effect of somebody
else's mood or general disposition on your own productivity.
"If they're doing a technical task effectively, why would the
fact that they're curmudgeonly affect other people's work?
Or why, if on the way to work I got into a traffic jam and
was cut off by a driver, would I then be more likely to reject
projects in an innovation meeting four hours later? That's not
rational, but it happens."
It happens for two reasons: people are emotional creatures
and emotions are social. "No person is an emotional island,"
Barsade likes to say. "We're walking mood inductors," passing
our own moods on to others, who in turn pass them on to
people they encounter.
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