Emotions and Personality: An Interconnected View

Emotions shape an individual’s personality and it is the emotion that shapes a person’s opinion, trust and belief about the company and the job that one performs. It is found that people within inner circle are the one who are able to recognize and understand emotions in better way (Jandail, 2014). Therefore it is evident that there is a strong inter-connection between one’s emotion, attitude, personality and behavior at work. This essay aims to demonstrate a critical consideration of the role emotions and personality plays in one’s workplace through the help of literature. The next part of the essay is a reflection on self that gives an elaboration regarding self traits identified through various results perceived from seven different measures of personality. Lastly the essay end with an analysis is of the result is carried out for highlighting the positive and negative traits of self.

Personality is the combination of all the emotions and behavior pattern. All the behavior patterns and emotions that make the personality of a person are measureable. Based on the personality company hires the employees and the based on the employees’ trait the company faces challenges and benefits (Noam & Fischer, 2013). The personality can be determined by the few determinants that are Heredity determinants, social environments and situational factors. The heredity of physiological determinants includes the physical characteristics, intelligence quotient and temperament. Family roles, traditional practices, norms, values, customs, procedures, and other cultural aspects fall under the broad concept of Social and cultural environment. The situation factors are the determinants that help us understanding a personality by the actions and reactions of a person in different situation (Buss & Plomin, 2014).

The term emotion can be called as feeling that includes experiences of joy, hate, love, fear, anger, trust panic and grief. They are related to different forms of mood of a person. Emotions are the specific type of reactions one delivers willingly or unwillingly in a specific situation or event that are in short duration. The six universal emotions are happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger and disgust. Factors that affect one’s emotions are the personality and the culture that one belongs. Age and gender can also have strong impact on one’s emotion along with the way one is socialized. External factors such as stress and weather can also cause changes in one’s emotion and the way of behavior pattern (Dweck, 2013) A person’s emotion can drive decision making, creativity and interpersonal relations. Similarly the emotions have a significant role to play in the professional relationships as well. The impacts of the emotions can be either positive or negative. Positive impacts can include increase in creativity, encouragement in helping other fellows, cooperation and adjustment in different kind of situations. Lesser aggressions and accuracy in the work performance can also be considered as the positive impacts of emotions. On the other hand the negative impacts of emotions can include increased aggression towards other people, dissatisfactions in life, disputes and feeling dejected or low-spirited.

Determinants of Personality and its Implications in the Workplace

The connection of emotions, personality and attitude with the behavior at work can be explained through the theory that is called Affective Events Theory (AET). Developed by organizational psychologist Russell Cropanzano and Howard M. Weiss the AET is a model that will help explaining the influences of emotion and moods on job performance as well as job satisfaction (Ashkanasy, Ayoko & Jehn, 2014). The model is an overall explanation of the linkage between cognitions, emotions, mental states and their respective reactions to the occurring incidents in the workplace. The theory argues that particular events on the job in the workplace can have different impact on different people in term of their emotions (Beasley & Jason, 2015). These emotions can act as inspiring or uninspiring on the employees and based on their action the company can benefit or otherwise. The emotions has a good impact on organizations, the influences on organizations can determine the results or the outcome of organizations.

In contemporary era, economy that is driven by innovation only the smart personality will be able to survive. Emotions directly affect the amount of intellectual capital.  The tangible value of a business is the Intellectual capital, it covers the human capital, relational capital and structural capital of which intellectual property is as one component.  The connection between the emotional state and the customer service is evident if a person is heavily influenced by negative emotions the interaction between the customer and the organization is ought to be disaster through which the company will only suffer loss and not gain profit out of business (Ali & Amin, 2014). An organization being responsive means being rapid as well as flexible and being it is one of the important features of successful organization. The major question of productivity of employees also depends on the emotions. Lastly an organization will only be able to attract the employees and retain them by the employees only as a happy workplace is often seen as a main factor of employee retention and attraction. Emotions is a deciding factor when people’s responsive behavior is concerned, when the employees are in experience of positive impact, they tend to be more responsive. Therefore emotions play vital role determining employee’s behavior in an organization.

There are self-assessments available that help in determine positive and negative traits of a personality. In the below paragraph I have elaborated my self assessment that I have conducted through seven online tests. The purpose of the combination of all the surveys is to evaluate my characteristics and analyze it.

The Impacts of Emotions on Workplace Behavior

PANAS: emotions and mood can be classified in two categories positive and negative. PANAS that stands for Positive and Negative Affect Schedule is a self-report questionnaire that has two ten item scales that measure both positive and negative effect of personality (Jovanovi?, 2015). Positive affect and negative affect play important role in making perception and influence on the things we pay attention.  My PANAS positive emotion is 34 and the negative emotion is 22. According to PANAS I tend to experience moderate positive affect as my score is from 26 to 35. Also, since my negative emotion score is 22, I tend to experience high positive affect.

Habitual Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: this particular form of research helps in examining emotion regulation of both positive and negative emotion and the effect of it on emotional, physiological, cognitive, behavioural, social functioning and well-being. The emotion regulation is the strategies used by people to influence the emotions they experience and the way they express the emotions (Spaapen et al., 2014). There are three strategies under the habitual emotion regulation questionnaire. They are cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression and authentic expression. The score of my three strategies are as follows:  cognitive reappraisal: 3.1666666666666665, expressive suppression: 3.5 and authentic expression: 3.75. According to the results my cognitive reappraisal is 3.17 that is lower than the average of the norm group, which implies that my capacity to manage the demands of the situation is less.  As my expressive suppression is 3.5 which is slightly lower than the mean Expressive suppression means that I am slight incapable of hiding my emotions or outward display of any emotion that I feel.  Lastly my authentic expression id  3.75 which is lower than the mean authentic expression of the norm group which explains why I am slightly hesitated about showing emotions freely and naturally without modification to maintain the experience of that emotion.

The Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire: this questionnaire gives account of three dimensions of trait emotions that is Negative Expressivity, Positive Expressivity and impulse strength (Goldstein, Tamir & Winner, 2013). My score of the Berkeley expressivity questionnaire are impulse strength:  4.5, negative expressivity: 2.6666666666666665, and positive expressivity: 4.25. The impulse strength of 4.5 explains that I am lesser than the required amount of impulsive behavior. My positive expressivity is more than the negative expressivity that mean I am towards the introvert side as both the positive and negative scores are lesser than the required. However, having negative expressivity is a positive trait of a character.

Emotional Intelligence: The abilities that are in combination of both emotion and cognition process in term of social functioning and emotional situation is called the emotional intelligence. The emotional intelligence is considered in four dimensions (Murphy, 2014) Understanding of both emotion and management skills can help employees work actively choosing their emotional regulation strategies. Emotional intelligence can be measured by STEM and STEU. The survey shows my STEM: 0.616805 and STEU: 0.76 which means I am capable of using emotional strategies in the emotional experiences.

Big 5 Personality: the five factor model of personality is used to identify five basic personality dimensions that underlie human behaviour (Curtis, Windsor, & Soubelet, 2015). My big five personality result shows extraversion: 2.625, agreeableness: 4.23, conscientiousness: 2.7, neuroticism: 1.875 and openness: 3.2.  The following scores suggests that i am not much sociable and do not talk much. I am a good natured, cooperative and trust-worthy person. I am not much of a responsible person and emotionally not stable.  Also, i am not very imaginative, artistically sensitive and intellectual.

Jungian 16-Type Personality: According to my score, i am identified with ESFP. I am a person that is sociable, spontaneous, musician, fun-loving and generous personality. In a one word, I am a performer.

Type A or B Personality: this is a process that measures the degree to which a person is competitive and rushes for time. Since my scores is 108, it means I am a type A personality that means I am prone to stress and frustration. I am a person who will be able to do routine work and not creative also, I am a person who is more concerned about quantity and not quality.

Emotions play a significance role and therefore, it is an essential part to be aware of the self traits. The companies often tend to hire people with specific characteristics and so it the employees who choose companies that are as per their behaviour. With all the results of the self-assessments my positive and negative traits are eventually clear. A person can have positive and negative impact of behaviour however it depends on situation to situation. Also, a person can have control on one’s emotion if consciously practiced.

References:

Ali, F., & Amin, M. (2014). The influence of physical environment on emotions, customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions in Chinese resort hotel industry. Journal for Global Business Advancement, 7(3), 249-266.

Ashkanasy, N. M., Ayoko, O. B., & Jehn, K. A. (2014). Understanding the physical environment of work and employee behavior: An affective events perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(8), 1169-1184.

Beasley, C. R., & Jason, L. A. (2015). Engagement and disengagement in mutual-help addiction recovery housing: A test of affective events theory. American journal of community psychology, 55(3-4), 347-358.

Buss, A. H., & Plomin, R. (2014). Temperament (PLE: Emotion): Early developing personality traits. Psychology Press.

Dweck, C. S. (2013). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology press.

Goldstein, T. R., Tamir, M., & Winner, E. (2013). Expressive suppression and acting classes. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7(2), 191.

Jandail, R. R. S. (2014). A proposed novel approach for sentiment analysis and opinion mining. International Journal of UbiComp, 5(1/2), 1.

Jovanovi?, V. (2015). Beyond the PANAS: Incremental validity of the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) in relation to well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, 487-491.

Noam, G. G., & Fischer, K. W. (Eds.). (2013). Development and vulnerability in close relationships. Psychology Press. 

Spaapen, D. L., Waters, F., Brummer, L., Stopa, L., & Bucks, R. S. (2014). The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Validation of the ERQ-9 in two community samples. Psychological Assessment, 26(1), 46.