Article
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Managing Perceptions of Distress at Work: Reframing Emotion as Passion

By: Elizabeth Baily Wolf, Jooa Julia Lee, Sunita Sah and Alison Wood Brooks

Format:Print

Abstract

Expressing distress at work can have negative consequences for employees: observers perceive employees who express distress as less competent than employees who do not. Across five experiments, we explore how reframing a socially inappropriate emotional expression (distress) by publicly attributing it to an appropriate source (passion) can shape perceptions of, and decisions about, the person who expressed emotion. In Studies 1a–c, participants viewed individuals who reframed distress as passion as more competent than those who attributed distress to emotionality or made no attribution. In Studies 2a–b, reframing emotion as passion shifted interpersonal decision making: participants were more likely to hire job candidates and choose collaborators who reframed their distress as passion compared to those who did not. Expresser gender did not moderate these effects. Results suggest that in cases when distress expressions cannot or should not be suppressed, reframing distress as passion can improve observers' impressions of the expresser.

Keywords

Decision Making; Emotions; Perception

Citation

Wolf, Elizabeth Baily, Jooa Julia Lee, Sunita Sah, and Alison Wood Brooks. "Managing Perceptions of Distress at Work: Reframing Emotion as Passion." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 137 (November 2016): 1–12.