An Experience Sampling Study of Expressing Affect, Daily Affective Well-Being, Relationship Quality and Perceived Performance

Kevin Daniels, Jane Glover, Nadine Mellor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)
110 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Few studies have directly examined the processes through which workers use job resources, such as job control and social support, to regulate affect. We focused on affective expression, which is a specific form of affect regulation. We investigated the extent to which workers used both job control and social support to express affect. Thirty-nine call centre workers provided data up to four times a day over five consecutive working days (number of observations = 272). Executing job control to allow workers to express affect was related to using social support to express affect. Workers' understanding of their personal goals mediated relationships between using social support to express affect and four outcomes (negative affect, positive affect, perceived performance, and quality of workplace relationships). Perceived empathy mediated relationships between using social support to express affect and three outcomes (negative affect, positive affect, and quality of workplace relationships). The findings indicated that (1) one job resource can be used to facilitate using another job resource for affect regulation and (2) different job resources may play different roles in conferring benefits from affective expression.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)781–805
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
Volume87
Issue number4
Early online date30 Jun 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2014

Keywords

  • job resources
  • social support
  • job control

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