The interpersonal effects of emotional expressions with both and single valences on work-related satisfaction: an examination of emotions and perceived openness as mediators

ABSTRACT

Work-related satisfaction has critical benefits. To predict work-related satisfaction, we investigated how a counterpart’s expressions of emotional complexity (both positive and negative emotions), positive emotions, and negative emotions influenced a perceiver’s work-related satisfaction during discussions over different work-relevant ideas. We conducted a three-wave coworker survey (N = 529) and an experiment with a confederate as a task partner (N = 378). The results consistently showed significant positive impacts of a counterpart’s emotional complexity and positive emotion expressions on a perceiver’s work-related satisfaction by enhancing the perceiver’s positive emotions and evaluation of the counterpart’s openness. Conversely, a counterpart’s negative emotion expression significantly decreased a perceiver’s work-related satisfaction by reducing perceived counterpart openness. We also did not find a perceiver’s negative emotion as a significant mediator of the associations between the three emotional expressions and work-related satisfaction. Therefore, our investigation highlights similar positive effects of emotional complexity and positive emotion expressions and suggests that an expression of both positive and negative emotions promotes satisfaction by enhancing positive emotions and openness perception.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional expression
• emotional complexity
• openness
• emotions
• work-related satisfaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Please see the detailed information about the screening process in the file titled “Data Screening in Study 1” using the web link: https://osf.io/stmve/?view_only=b77ec9c6ec0f4306a3007f9ad6355286.

2 To test discriminant validity of measures in Studies 1 and 2, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses and chi-square difference tests, and the results supported the separation of the measures. Please see the detailed results in the section titled “Discriminant Validity of Measures in Studies 1 and 2.”

3 MD refers to a mean difference between two conditions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Singapore Ministry of Education: [grant no C242/MSS21S004].