Houston: Faking a positive attitude to elicit benefits may backfire when used with co-workers, according to a study which suggests that making an effort to communicate the felt emotions can be more productive. The study surveyed working adults in a wide variety of industries including education, manufacturing, engineering, and financial services for two types of emotion regulation — surface acting and deep acting.
“Surface acting is faking what you are displaying to other people. Inside, you may be upset or frustrated, but on the outside, you are trying your best to be pleasant or positive,” said Allison Gabriel, study co-author from Eller College of Management in the US.
“Deep acting is trying to change how you feel inside. When you are deep acting, you’re actually trying to align how you feel with how you interact with other people,” Gabriel explained.
Additionally, they tried to understand why employees choose to regulate their emotions if there was no formal rule requiring them to do so, and what benefits they get out of this effort.
Based on the survey, the research team could categorise the participants into four groups — nonactors, low actors, deep actors, and regulators.
Regulators were driven by impression management motives, while deep actors were more likely to be motivated by prosocial concerns. Based on this observation, the researchers said deep actors choose to regulate their emotions with co-workers to foster positive work relationships, as opposed to being motivated by gaining access to more resources. According to Gabriel, deep actors try to be positive with their co-workers for prosocial reasons and to reap significant benefits from these efforts.
—PTI
