How Emotions And Personality Interact

In this article, the writer is looking at emotions and personality/ personality traits and how they affect our behavior. Whether in the workplace or outside it. We look at how our emotions may affect our decision making, how our personality may affect decision making, how positive emotions can help employees cope in their workplaces. the article also looks at the different personality types that are more susceptible to depression. Aside from the basic personalities we study in class, this article also brings to light personalities that are as a result of the big five personal traits being grouped together.

Emotions on coping with the organization.

In this section, the author is focusing on the way positive emotions in the workplace can impact the employee’s performance and psychological wellbeing in the workplace. We are looking at four positive emotions namely, joy, interest, contentment and love, and how they affect an employee’s reactions in a workplace. Gupta states that “Joy sparks the urge to play; interest develops the urge to explore; contentment leads to the desire to savor and integrate different views and information about the world; and love gives rise to a recurring cycle of each of these urges.

” Interest also lets an employee put all the skill that they have into working / solving something. From this article, we see that once employees feel these positive emotions in their workplace, they are more likely to participate in workplace activities, beat deadlines and in the long run too, there will be a reduction of counterproductive workplace behavior if any.

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So, for positive emotions in the workplace, the author carried out a survey to see whether the employees who cultivate the positive emotions do benefit from them. The survey was done on 25 studies to see the relation between positive emotions and workplace wellbeing and then 15 studies were shortlisted for detailed review. From these 15 that were shortlisted, we see that positive emotions in the workplace let employees deal with stress better, induce creativity and let the employee think outside the box. This is because when you feel a positive vibe in your workplace, you feel that your voice counts, and you are motivated to participate in work activities and willing to go an extra mile to produce results. The author also brings to light that positive emotions can result into charismatic leadership in the workplace. And with this type of leadership, employees feel more comfortable taking criticism from their supervisors and it is easier for them to seek help where they need it too.

How our emotions and personality interact. To see the way our emotions interact with our personality, an environment outside the workplace was used. The survey for this was carried out in a vacation context. The sample size was 40 adults within the age group of 45-65 years. 20 Americans and 20 Germans who were each vacationing for 5 days. They were each given a diary to fill out daily. One was eliminated though due to inconsistencies in filling out the diary, which brought the sample size to 39. In this study, the author was looking at how two big five personality traits, extraversion and neuroticism influence two basic emotions, joy and fear.

The author found that the extroverted travelers had a lower baseline of fear compared to the introverted travelers. So, to check this, managers of tourist get away companies are encouraged to try and determine what personality the tourist has as they book the trip for them by asking them questions relating to what type of excursion they would be interested in. For extroverts, they will like activities that will get their adrenaline pumping, while introverts would not entirely appreciate that. When the questions are asked during the booking, the manager is then able to book the tourists on trips that they will enjoy.

How emotions and personality influence investing. Day in, day out, investors are making big decisions on where to invest their money. A lot goes into this decision making, and if decisions are made on impulse, they could cost the investor millions of dollars. In this article, the author shows us how emotions can determine an investors investment personality. The big five personality traits where grouped into two; methodical and individualistic personality, while “emotional factors of optimisms excitement, thrill, euphoria, anxiety, denial, fear, desperations, capitulation, despondency, depression, hope and relief are reduced in to five factors. The emotions and personalities are described below;The indecisive emotion basically explains an investors negative emotions. Individuals who are not affected by this are usually more optimistic and deliberately approach the market. Clueless emotions include panic & euphoria.

Investors who are not influenced by these optimistically approach the market. They may wait and watch the situation before making decisions, while pessimists may just sell off stock. Paranoid emotion, which comprises fear and depression, will cause investors to make biased decisions if it has high influence on them, and error free decisions if it has low influence on them. Enthusiastic emotion explains one’s activeness and positive approach towards the market. This is a psychological factor that pushes investors to perform better than they did before. Dogmatic emotion is a positive emotion of high confident state consisting of hope & optimism. Two outcomes of this emotion are contrarian behavior or herding behavior.

Methodical personality, which comprises agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism is usually possessed by investors who are emotionally stable, cognitive & experienced. Individualistic personality which comprises conscientiousness and openness, clarifies the positive emotional attitude of the investors and describes their investment experience & goal-oriented behavior. For the research, questionnaires were distributed to the investors, which was aimed to collect data on the relation between an investor’s emotion and demographic on their personality development. A five-point scale was used to score the results, “strongly agree” meaning the variable has strong influence on their investment decisions and strongly disagree meaning the variable has no influence on their investment decision.

The results showed that there exists a significant relationship between the investors emotional state and their investment personality. investors who are influenced by indecisiveness emotions show a negative relation with individualistic and no relation with methodical investment personality. Clueless emotions show negative relationship with individualistic personality. Results show that such investors are not open and conscientious in nature. Paranoid emotions are negatively correlated with both personalities. This means that paranoid emotions may influence investors to be intuitive and risk averse in their decision making. Enthusiastic emotions have a negative relation with individualistic personality. This is because enthusiasm is a result of overconfidence and together, aggressive behavior can cause investors to make intuitive decisions.

Dogmatic emotions have a negative relation with methodical investment personality. Emotions & personality traits on employers reaction to ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity has to do with how well individuals can handle being in an unstructured environment. The research for this was carried out in Greece, which is known for its high intolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity & complexity. It was done around the time of the financial crisis in Greece, on the banking industry, which is quite important to their economy. The crisis caused a lot of ambiguity/ uncertainty, so this research was to study the managers emotions and personality and then see how they affect their tolerance for ambiguity.

In this study, the author tries to find out whether the managers with high ambiguity tolerance feel greater organizational commitment, job satisfaction, experience greater levels of pleasure, arousal & dominance, exhibit greater importance and interest etc. 412 middle managers participated in the survey. The questionnaire for emotions they used Dimensions of Arousal-Pleasure-Dominance questionnaire which has 12 semantic questions scored on a scale of -4 to +4. For tolerance, the author used a tolerance ambiguity questionnaire, that was scored 1-100. The results showed that there is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and ambiguity tolerance. How emotions and personality affect employee supervision.

As far as supervision is concerned, the author states that this could be a sticky situation because supervision being considered as abusive may depend on the person on the receiving end. So, in this study, abusive supervision is referring to the employees self-reports or their individual perception. From the authors research they let us know that employees who possess three of five of the big five personality traits; emotional stability, conscientiousness & agreeableness are the ones more susceptible to the negative correlation of abusive supervision and personality. The results from the survey showed that employees who rank low on conscientiousness and emotional stability are more likely to report abusive supervision, since their areas of weakness such as disorganization, unreliability, easy emotional distress etc. may trigger a negative / abusive reaction from their managers.

Emotions and personality on depression. In this study, the authors are studying what relationship exists been individuals’ emotions, personality and depression. From the big five personality traits, neuroticism is seen to be the most prone to depression. But also, the authors state that people with lower extraversion, conscientiousness & agreeableness are also depression prone. High intensity of negative emotions and a low intensity of positive emotions lead individuals to depression. Two studies were carried out to determine the relationship between the intensity of emotions and depression, and how personality dimensions react to emotional reactivity.

The results showed that a high intensity of negative emotions for neuroticism exposes them to high chances of depression. Those high on extraversion didn’t report high intensity on positive emotions or be more emotionally reactive, while those low on extraversion seem to be more prone to clinical depression. The effect that personality and emotions have on decision making is not something that should be taken lightly. The writer of this article agrees with many of the results that were presented by the various authors after their research and surveys were completed. Managers need to pay attention to their employees’ personalities as they distribute projects or make some decisions. This will help the employees thrive better in their workplaces.

We have seen that positive emotions in a workplace go a long way in encouraging employees to perform better which consequently benefits the company in terms of productivity. As far as employee supervision is concerned in the workplace, managers need to learn how to deal with the very vocal employees/ extroverts, in a way that will not make them feel like they are being harassed in the workplace. Extroverts sometimes very easily get a following behind them and once they get dissatisfied, it could be easy for a lot of workplace damage to be caused. They can also get creative ways to involve them in decision making or delegating tasks to them.

For ambiguity tolerance, the managers we have seen from the authors research that once employees feel satisfied at their jobs they are better equipped to deal with ambiguity in terms of emotionally and as far as positive attitude is concerned. Because of the satisfaction that they find in the work that they do, they are more likely to get creative and come up with solutions to sort out some ambiguous situations. Knowing your clients emotions and personalities as they go/ book a vacation is also very critical to a company because from paying attention to this, they can guarantee customer satisfaction which also benefits the company as a whole.

The writer thinks it’s a good idea to have a short but precise questionnaire for tourists to fill out as they book their trip/ excursion because this will help them get their money’s worth. And it also shows the clients that the company is interested in them having a good time with something that suites their personality and is not just interested in selling out trips. Between emotions, personality & depression, the writer feels strongly about this study. Technology is beginning to take over a lot lately, so people tend to keep themselves. For people low on extraversion, this could lead them more into alienation, and as they keep bottling up emotions, they maybe easily get depressed.

All in all, our emotions and personality affect the decisions that we make and we need to be well aware of this. Our emotions and personality are also interdependent on each other in certain situations and sometimes our emotions may influence our personalities and vice versa. Employees and managers need to make a conscious effort to find out what personality traits the people they are working with have, and then they should learn how to approach different situations that they are faced with in an appropriate manner that will be a win-win for both.

References

1. Charles, A., Kasilingam, R. (2014). Do investors’ emotions determine their investment personality? KIIT Journal of Management. (10)2, 45-57
2. Henle, C. A., Gross, M. A. (2014). What have I done to deserve this?: Effects of employee personality and emotion on abusive supervision. Journal of Business Ethics, (122)3, 461-474. doi:10.1007/s10551-013-1771-6
3. Karreman. A., Bekker. M.H.J., Marcel van Assen. A.L.M. (2012). Intensity of positive and negative emotions: Explaining the associateion between personality and depressive symptoms. Personality and Individual Differences, (54)2, 214-220.
4. Katsaros, K.K., Nicolaidis, C.S. (2012). Personal traits, emotions and attitudes in the workplace: Their effect on managers tolerance of ambiguity. The Psychologist- Manager Journal, (15)1, 37-55.
5. Vibhuti. G., Devalina, (2015). Role of positive emotions in organizational coping. Journal of Organisation and Human Behavior, 4(2).
6. Yeqiang, L., Kerstetter, D., Nawijn, J. & Mitas, O. (2014). Changes in emotions and their interactions with personality in vacation context. Tourism Management, (40), 416-424.