Managing emotion and mood in the workplace

I liked this blog on emotion and mood in the workplace. This comes from BPS's Occupational Digest. This, along with their 'Research Digest' blog has got to be one the best psychology blogs around. I've put them both on our news feeds page.

It reminded me about my undergraduate thesis a very long time ago, which was looking at gender differences in the outcomes of social interactions at work (especially stressful ones). In my admittedly pretty rudimentary diary study, I found that women reported more stressful events at work. However, when men experienced stressful events like meeting their boss, they had a much greater, negative impact, particularly on their mood. I've no idea if this has ever been replicated, but the whole area of how people manage or fail to manage their mood at work is fascinating. My hunch is that men struggle with this more than women on the whole.

There's very interesting psychological research going on in the field of emotion regulation. Check out this website on EROS (Emotion Regulation in Others and Self), which explains it all in non-academic language.

Notably, a manager's ability to manage their emotions has been highlighted by research as one the key management behaviours that can help prevent and reduce stress.