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21 Emotions as social entities: interpersonal

functions and eects of emotion in organizations
Shlomo Hareli, Anat Rafaeli and Brian Parkinson

Introduction
The eld of organizational behavior has undergone an aective revolution (Barsade
et al., 2003), with growing interest in the functions and inuence of emotions in dierent
organizational contexts (Ashkanasy et al., 2000; Fineman, 2000; Brief & Weiss, 2002;
Lord et al., 2002). More and more, emotions are recognized as relevant to organizational
life on multiple levels and in dierent contexts, including interactions between individuals
(Rafaeli & Worline, 2001) and between or within groups (Kelly & Barsade, 2001; Bartel
& Saavedra, 2000) and organizations (Huy, 1999).
Studies of emotion in organizations have focused primarily on the antecedents and consequences of aective reactions. A notable example of this trend is the idea of aective
events theory (AET) suggested by Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) and followed up in subsequent research (e.g., Fisher, 2002; Grandey et al., 2002). The underlying logic of AET is
that emotions inuence behavior, so that the emotions experienced by an individual while
performing a particular task inuence that individuals performance in subsequent tasks.
In line with AET, scholars have considered the inuence of individual aect on dierent
aspects such as behavior, motivation, creativity, and interpersonal judgments (Forgas &
George, 2001). Work on group emotion similarly suggests that the emotional tone within
a group is critical to the performance of individual group members and of the group as a
whole (Bartel & Saavedra, 2000; Kelly & Barsade, 2001; Barsade, 2002). Likewise, Huys
(1999) analyses connect organizational-level aect to successful organizational change.
These lines of research, for the most part, share a focus on how peoples emotions shape
their behavior, whether from the perspective of the individual alone or as part of a group.
Emotions as social entities
In recent years, however, there is a growing understanding that emotions serve signicant
social functions (e.g., Parkinson et al., 2005). In line with this idea, Oatley (2000) proposed
three basic social goals motivating the human activities that underlie emotions: aliation,
protection and dominance. Emotional reactions are designed to further these goals, with
each particular emotion occupying a dierent location within the space of coordinates
dened by the associated goal dimensions. Thus, for example, happiness reects the goal
of aliation while anger reects the goal of domination. In contrast, fear and shame represent loss of dominance. These emotions in turn motivate behaviors intended to achieve
their corresponding goals. Leary (2000) has also suggested that specic types of emotions,
serve specic social goals. He proposed two subsets of emotions that serve such goals:
socialevaluative emotions and socialrelational emotions. While socialevaluative emotions have to do with how people feel about others, socialrelational emotions can be seen
as emotional reactions to others aective reactions to oneself.
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Others have pointed out the social communicative function of emotions. For example,
Barrett and Nelson-Goens (1997) suggest that emotions serve as social signals to others
and Parkinson et al. (2005) similarly suggest that many emotions serve interpersonal functions mostly by aecting others reactions. For example, sadness often solicits social
support, and embarrassment deects undue attention from someone else (Keltner &
Buswell, 1997). This view broadens the focus of attention from the eect that emotions
have on individuals experiencing the emotions, to their relations with others and their
social surroundings. Among other things it suggests that others who register anothers
emotions may be aected in various ways. In line with this social view of emotions, this
chapter embraces a perspective that considers emotions (and particularly emotions in
organizations) as social entities (Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987; Parkinson, 1996;
Parkinson et al., 2005). That is, we view emotions as active processes shaping the unfolding of organizational interactions and their consequences. Our point of departure from
more traditional work is that the emotions of an actor (a focal person) have contextbound manifestations that are perceivable by, of relevance to, and, potentially, a source
of inuence over other people (observers or target persons) (Izard, 1971; Ekman, 1975;
Fridlund, 1994).
Emotions are communicated to and perceived by others during social interaction
(Fridlund, 1991; Rim et al., 1998, 1991). As such, emotions are seen as inuencing
others partly by conveying information about the situation of the individual and his/her
behavioral intentions (Izard, 1971; Ekman et al., 1972; Fridlund, 1994). Perceivers are
highly sensitive to others emotions and extract meaning from them with relatively low
cognitive eort (Calder et al., 1996). However, emotions not only convey information
about a persons authentic psychological situation but are also used as a strategic and
sometimes deceptive means of social inuence (Fridlund, 1994). Thus intrapersonal and
interpersonal regulation of emotion presentations always needs to be factored in to our
explanations.
Our goal in this chapter is to review some available insights from existing research and
to propose a framework for the understanding and analysis of the social dynamics of
emotions in organization as outlined above. We suggest that emotions can shape and
structure the emergent unfolding patterns of social interactions. Thus our analysis examines the dynamic functional operation of emotions in organizational interactions by reference to previous research into the cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences of
perceiving other peoples emotions. Those who are inuenced by perceived emotion may
be direct targets of an emotional communication, people with compatible relations to the
object of the emotion (e.g., by virtue of their social identity or work role), or simply uninvolved observers. In each case registering emotion-related movements in context may
impact on ongoing response in a number of ways and at a number of levels. Our analysis
is intended not only to oer an overview of current understandings of these important
functions of emotions in organizations but also to serve as a scaold for future research.
Perception of emotions in the workplace: a short historical note
As claimed above, emotions displayed by one person can communicate important information to others (see also Parkinson et al., 2005). Organizational research into this function of emotions dates back to work on emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983), which
originally explored how emotions displayed by individuals as part of their work roles can

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inuence other peoples perceptions and responses (e.g., Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987, 1989).
The primary focus of this line of research fell on how displays of emotion are used to
inuence others so as to promote organizational goals, such as increased customer satisfaction (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988) or compliance (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1991). However, subsequent research into emotional labor has given more attention to underlying psychological
processes, and to the consequences of generating organizationally approved emotions
using either surface or deep acting (Grandey, 2003).
More recently, there has been a renewed focus on the social consequences of emotion
displays. For example, Ct (2005) suggested that emotions presented by a focal person
are subject to interpretation and feedback by partners to the social interaction, thereby
creating a bi-directional social process (Weick, 1979). The implication is that observation
of others emotions can have extensive implications across a wide range of social and
organizational situations that do not relate directly to emotional labor. The following
section reviews examples of several studies that have assessed the ways in which witnessing others emotions aects observers.
Perception of emotions in the workplace
In this section, we discuss examples of organizational research into the way emotions
experienced by individuals aect perceivers of these emotions. We focus particularly on
organizationally based emotional interactions relating to achievements (i.e., successes and
failures), consumers complaints, and negotiations. Consideration of these three kinds of
aective event allows us to sample from a relatively broad spectrum of organizational
contexts. Not only does this help to illustrate the richness and complexity of the phenomena under investigation, but also it permits assessment of how various aspects of the
organizational and social setting might moderate the interpersonal eects of exposure to
displayed emotions. For example, we can compare interactions between people formally
belonging to the same organization (e.g., a manager and his/her employee) with interactions between people who are not members of the same organization (e.g., a service
agent and a customer). In addition, the chapter examines cases in which the observer is
one of the interacting parties as well as cases in which the observer is not personally
involved in the interaction. Where relevant, we also consider additional factors that may
interact with these dimensions. For example, cultural processes may often be relevant to
the operation of emotional inuence. Our general aim is to exemplify the complexity and
richness of emotional interaction in organizations rather than to catalogue the variety of
specic eects of dierent emotion displays in dierent organizational contexts. A secondary aim is to take steps toward the development of explanatory resources. We hope
that our discussion will generate further research into this evolving topic among scientists
interested in organizations and emotions.
Organizational achievements
Emotions are experienced in response to signicant events (Frijda, 1986; Ortony et al.,
1988; Lazarus, 1991). Achievements are likely to be perceived as signicant for interested
parties within an organization including those who helped to bring them about and those
who are aected by their consequences. The nature of these consequences determines the
nature of the emotional responses experienced by those aected. For example, when the
achievement in question is a failure, people associated with the outcome are likely to

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experience anger, guilt and shame. In contrast, success tends to lead to pride and happiness. Such emotions in turn help to shape the subsequent reactions of those experiencing
them (Hareli & Weiner, 2002; Hareli et al., 2005) as well as the reactions of other people
who are exposed to them.
As well as inuencing the people experiencing them, emotional responses to achievements can also aect other people who are exposed to them. Various judgments about,
and behaviors toward achievers are shaped by the emotions that are shown following a
success or failure. For example, displays of emotions such as anger, guilt and sadness can
determine the extent to which individuals associated with an organizational or personal
failure are regarded by observers as bearing blame, and the degree to which they are seen
as competent. In particular, Tiedens et al. (2000) found that employees displaying anger
following an organizational failure were seen as less responsible for the failure and as more
competent and dominant more generally than employees displaying sadness in the same
situation. Correspondingly, displays of pride following a success led to perceptions of
greater dominance than displays of appreciation. Thus, observers seem to make dierent
social judgments about individuals associated with a given achievement based on the way
these individuals respond emotionally.
In Tiedens et al.s study, observers were simply witnesses of emotional responses to
achievement and had no direct link with the judged employee. In practice, other members
of the organization are often more closely involved in the achievement or its implications.
For example, they may be required to make judgments about the factors contributing to
the achievement or about its consequences for the organization and its employees. Such
observers may even have the power to determine the fate of the successful or unsuccessful employees. This raises the question of whether emotional responses of succeeding or
failing employees exert comparable eects under these circumstances. In response to this
question, Hareli & Shomrat (work in progress) asked participants with managerial experience to assume the role of a manager interrogating a failing employee. Participants were
shown a video recording of an employee explaining how a failure he was associated with
had happened. In dierent versions of the video, the employee presented identical explanations in contrasting emotional tones. It was found that managers were more likely to
discount explanations made in anger than non-emotional explanations. Thus, anger
seemed to decrease the perceived credibility of the message. In addition, managers
expressed greater reluctance to promote employees who displayed either anger or shame
than employees displaying no particular emotion. This may suggest that when subordinates are evaluated by people with power over them, decisions about changes of status
such as promotion are aected by signals that bear on the current status of the subordinates (e.g., anger as a signal of dominance, and shame as a signal of submissiveness,
Tiedens, 2001). Overall, this study suggests that managerial decisions about employees
can be inuenced by their perceived emotional responses to a specic failure.
Similar decisions may also be aected by reported emotional reactions to unrelated
achievements in dierent contexts. Two studies have assessed observers judgments of the
promotion chances of failing employees as a function of how these employees felt following a past failure. In the rst study, Prat (2003) found that observers judged promotion chances of employees feeling anger following failure to be higher than the chances of
employees feeling guilt in the same context. In the second, Rafaeli et al. (2006a) found that
cultural norms also aected this kind of promotion judgment. In their study, observers

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from an individualistic society (Israel) judged employees who felt angry following failure
as more likely to be promoted by others than employees who felt guilty. However, this
dierential judgment did not apply when they were asked to make similar decisions themselves. In contrast, collectivistic observers (Singaporeans) judged that the guilty employees were more likely to be promoted than the angry ones both by themselves and by others.
Thus, the relative evaluative implications of dierent emotions depend not only on culture
but also on the perspective from which the judgment is made.
Other kinds of organizational decisions also seem to be aected by perceived emotional
reactions. For example, Tiedens (2001) had observers watch a job interview in which an
employee was telling the interviewer how he felt following a failure in his previous job.
Observers then had to make decisions concerning the hiring of this employee and his
salary and status if hired (i.e., rank in the organization, level of independence in the job
and power). Although observers preferred to hire candidates reporting sadness following
the failure over employees reporting anger, higher status and salary were still recommended for the angry employees if they were to be hired. Despite observers apparent
reluctance to make positive hiring decisions concerning employees who reported anger
following a failure, then, they nevertheless believed that they should get a better rank and
salary than the employees reporting feeling sad. This seeming discrepancy between hiring
decisions, on one hand, and status and salary decisions on the other can be explained by
the stereotypical connection between expressed emotions and power. Given that angry
individuals are seen as more dominant than sad ones (ibid.), their potential for being perceived as trouble makers may also seem higher, explaining the reluctance to hire them.
However, once hired, the same stereotype might encourage giving them higher status and
salary to prevent them from asserting their perceived rights.
Another study mentioned above, however, showed that managers are less willing to
promote employees expressing anger following failure (Hareli & Shomrat, work in
progress). The potential for trouble from assertive employees may increase with actual
status and hence observers may be reluctant to promote angry employees if and when they
fail. Recall that Hareli and Shomrat found that failing employees expressing shame were
also less likely to be promoted, unlike failing employees who felt sad or guilty as shown
in other studies. This may be explained by beliefs shared by observers concerning the link
between shame, guilt, sadness and ability. While shame reects acknowledgment of inadequate abilities, guilt implies that ones performance has fallen short of ones abilities
(Hareli et al., 2005). Sadness, in contrast, does not carry direct implications about ones
abilities. This is presumably why employees expressing shame in the context of a failure
have less chance of being promoted than employees expressing guilt or sadness.
Finally, other discussions have considered three-person situations, in which individuals
draw inferences regarding someone else based on observations of the emotion displayed
by a third person following an achievement-related outcome. For example, Weiner (2005)
describes situations in which the emotions conveyed by a supervisor belied his or her
verbal description of a subordinates performance. People observing a supervisor who
showed anger while describing above-average performance by the subordinate concluded
that the supervisor considered the subordinate to have high skills and low motivation. In
contrast, expressions of satisfaction with merely average performance were interpreted as
suggesting that the subordinate invested a great deal of eort and thus overcame low
ability.

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Overall, this brief review shows that observers decisions and judgments concerning
failing or succeeding employees are strongly aected by awareness of these employees
feelings about the achievement. The impact of expressed emotion is not only determined
by its specic nature but is also sensitive to other contextual factors such as the perspective from which the decision or judgment is made and cultural norms. Also, information
about anothers emotional experience may often have similar eects on observers to direct
exposure to their expression in real time.
Customer complaints
When service providers or products fail to live up to expectations, customers are likely to
feel dissatisfaction and complain (Oliver & Swan, 1989). A complaint is best viewed as a
means of letting others know that one is dissatised with a given situation (Fornell &
Westbrook, 1979; Kowalski, 1996). Often the goal of such a complaint is not only to communicate this dissatisfaction but also to call for remedial action (Stephens & Gwinner,
1998). From the perspective of the organization, an encounter with a complaining customer may present an opportunity to restore the relationship with that customer and to
gain important feedback about service performance.
Encounters between complaining customers and service agents often involve strong
emotions being experienced and expressed by both sides. Each side may modulate his or
her emotional reaction in response to the emotions displayed by the other. In line with
this assertion, some recent work has linked customers expressed emotions while voicing
a complaint to the behaviors and reactions of customer service agents. In Hareli et al.s
(2006) study, it was found that the perceived validity of a complaint (i.e., is there really
something to complain about?) was enhanced when the complaint was voiced in an angry
tone rather than in a neutral or aliative tone. Emotional tone also aected the service
agents decisions about appropriate organizational response with angry complaints
leading to recommendation of higher levels of compensation when factual information
about the complaints legitimacy was ambiguous. However, anger associated with clearly
legitimate complaints seemed to lead to overjustication and an impression of bullying.
Overall, the results suggest that expressions of anger aect the credibility of the complainant. When it is unclear whether the complaint is legitimate, anger increases the complainants credibility and hence leads to higher compensation. However, when the factual
complaint itself leaves room for doubt, an angry tone reduces the customers credibility
and the level of compensation recommended by the service agent.
Other research has documented the more subtle eects that emotions accompanying
complaints may have on service agents that are the targets of these emotions. Rafaeli et al.
(2006b) showed that the ability of service agents to recall details of complaints voiced
by angry complainants was reduced relative to complaints made in a pleasant tone.
Further, their subsequent ability to solve problems was also diminished. This research
indicates that exposure to customers emotional complaints not only aects service
agents immediate decisions but also impacts on their subsequent ability to process relevant information.
Of course, complaints about products and services involve transmission of emotion not
only from customers to service workers but also from service workers to customers (and
back again). Expressions of aect by customer service workers have been shown to
inuence customers evaluations of overall service quality, with expressions of negative

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aect associated with negative evaluations (Doucet, 2004) and positive aect associated
with positive evaluations (Pugh, 2001). Thus, emotional information conveyed during the
process of voicing a complaint and its handling by the parties involved can determine the
outcome of this process on several dierent levels.
Negotiations
Emotional expressions can also inuence the course of negotiations in organizations. For
example, Carnevale and Isen (1986) argued that positive aect facilitates the discovery of
integrative solutions in bilateral negotiations. More recent research suggests that the
social eects of any given emotion are not unitary across dierent negotiation situations
but instead depend on contextual factors. Van Kleef et al. (2004a) examined the eects of
others anger and happiness on the outcomes of negotiations about a cellular phone contract. Participants conceded more to an angry opponent than to a happy one, an eect
the researchers attributed to tracking that is, using the emotions expressed by an opponent to infer his or her limits. Communication of anger (in contrast to happiness) by focal
persons induced fear and lowered the target persons demands.
In a second set of experiments (Van Kleef et al., 2004b), the same investigators rened
these ndings, showing that negotiating parties were aected by the emotions of others
only under low rather than high time pressure. In addition, those of lower status or power
were more inuenced by the emotions of their more-powerful opponents than the other
way around. The authors suggest that only negotiators motivated to consider their opponents expressed emotions are aected by them. Kopelman et al. (2006) also examined the
eects of displayed emotion in a negotiation situation, in this case between a condominium developer and a carpentry contractor. In this context they found that displays of
positive as opposed to negative or neutral emotions on the part of the contractor were
more likely to lead to a future business relationship. This eect was mediated by the developers willingness to pay more to a negotiator who strategically displayed positive rather
than negative emotions.
Thus in negotiations too, the dynamics of the exchange of opinions and the impact of
this exchange is partly determined by the emotions expressed by the interacting negotiators.
Emotions as social entities in organizational interactions
As this brief and non-exhaustive review suggests, exposure to the emotions of others
impacts on observers at various levels and in numerous contexts within the organizational
environment. Observers responses to others emotions clearly depend not only on the
valence of those emotions but also on their more specic quality. For example, a failing
individuals expression of anger exerts a dierent eect on an observer from his or her
expression of guilt or sadness, although all of these emotions are negative. The question
then is what determines the specic nature of interpersonal reactions to dierent emotions? What aspects of one particular emotion lead to it exerting a dierent eect on
someone else from another emotion expressed in an otherwise similar situation?
The answer to these questions lies in the informational meaning encapsulated by each
particular variety of emotion. According to appraisal theories, particular emotions dier
from one another by the story they tell. That is, each distinct emotion embodies a particular theme reecting the way the individual sees his/her relation with the environment
in a given situation. This idea is most explicitly reected in the notion of core relational

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themes suggested by Lazarus (1991). Thus, for example, Lazarus (p. 122) identies a
demeaning oense against me and mine as the core relational theme for anger and facing
an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming physical danger as the core relational theme
for fright. Other appraisal theories share a similar view focusing on dimensions describing the personenvironment relationship implied by each type of emotion (e.g., Roseman,
1984; Weiner, 1985).
Research into appraisal indicates that people share beliefs about the relationships
between emotions and the themes that they incorporate (e.g., Scherer, 1984; Smith &
Ellsworth, 1985) and make use of it as observers and interpreters of others emotions
(Weiner, 1995, 2005; Tiedens et al., 2000). From this point of view, emotions can be seen
as messages potentially transmitted to others who interpret them according to the themes
or personenvironment relationships typical of the particular emotion that is perceived.
As our review above suggests, observers infer much more from expressed emotions than
such an analysis would suggest. For example, while sadness tells a story about a painful
loss, observers of sadness following failure infer not only the pain of the failure-related
loss itself but also implications concerning the failing individuals view of him- or herself
as having low competence, as lacking dominance and so on (Tiedens et al., 2000). The
question then is how observers make a variety of judgments about a specic individual
experiencing a certain emotion that go beyond the characteristic theme of that emotion.
Part of the answer is that people have access to knowledge about the relations between
particular emotions and other factors such as actions tendencies typical of each emotion
(Frijda, 1986; Frijda et al., 1989) and norms of expressing emotions (Eid & Diener, 2001).
Such knowledge also shapes interpretations of emotional expressions and the resulting
social judgments made by observers of such emotions. In particular, observers use their
implicit schemas about relationships between emotions and other factors to make all the
inferences in question. Thus, an emotion can be seen to convey a message incorporating
a set of dierent meanings.
In concordance with this idea, Kirouac and Hess (1999) distinguished three types of
meanings inherent in an emotional message: symbolic, symptomatic, and appeal. The
symbolic meaning of an emotion is the semantic information directed at the observer. The
symptomatic meaning refers to information about the individual feeling or displaying
the emotion. The appeal meaning suggests pragmatic information about the intended
actions of the target person (the perceiver). For example, an expression of sadness might
convey to others that the focal person has experienced an irreversible loss (Lazarus, 1991).
This would represent the symbolic meaning of the emotional message. Sadness also
reects the psychological state of the individual, in this case, experiencing pain following
an irreversible loss. This would represent the symptomatic meaning of the message.
Finally, sadness also tells others what the person experiencing the emotion might do. S/he
may call for help or comfort. This would represent the appeal meaning of the emotion.
Each emotion conveys meanings in each of these ways and each kind of meaning is potentially readable by perceivers.
However, the process of interpreting emotional messages may be more complicated
than this analysis suggests because emotion interpretations do not arise in a contextual
vacuum. Indeed, the same emotional expression may be interpreted dierently depending
on the circumstances under which an encounter takes place. As the review above indicated, contextual factors such as the culture, the perspective from which a judgment is

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made, and the type of relations between parties to an encounter may each shape the interpretation of the informational-determining judgments, beliefs and actions toward an
emotional target person. Current research is still far from understanding the details of
how these inferences might be constructed.
As is clear from this analysis, exposure to anothers emotions inuences observers in
many dierent ways and on many dierent levels. First, the way an observer sees things
can be shaped dramatically by the emotions of a focal person as reected in reported
beliefs, judgments and perceptions. Observers, however, not only change their minds in
response to others emotional displays but also shape their behaviors toward these others
as evidenced by decisions relating to hiring, promotion and so on. Finally, not only the
content of observers minds is changed as a function of the displayed emotions of others
but also the way minds function. For example, the ability of service agents to recall details
of complaints and the tendency of negotiators to nd more or less integrative solutions
in bilateral negotiations are both substantially inuenced by emotions expressed by others
during the social interactions in question. Such eects, however, indicate that displays of
emotions aect not only others cognition and behavior but also their own emotions, just
as changes in cognitive functioning have been shown to be aected by peoples own
emotions (Carnevale & Isen, 1986).
In sum, exposure to others emotions in organizational interactions seems to play an
important role in determining the way such interactions unfold. Research is only beginning to explore the dynamics of this phenomenon and to uncover the mechanisms that
are involved. A perspective that sees emotions not only as something that happens in a
persons mind but also as something that occurs in a social interaction seems to open new
avenues for research into the function of emotions in organizations. Emotions shape organizational interactions in many dierent and complex ways that are yet to be discovered.
We hope that this chapter will increase the appetite of researchers to further examine this
important role of emotions.
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