Saturday, February 6, 2021

Fake It till You Make It?

It’s important to manage your workplace emotions.

Wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Irritated by cranky customers? Staying positive around your coworkers is the expected social norm, but it turns out that how you manage your emotions makes a huge difference.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found workers respond in mainly one of three ways to their coworkers:

Surface actors show positive emotion to coworkers even though they are not feeling it—fake it till you make it.
Deep actors change their attitude to be more positive with their coworkers.
Regulators engage in both surface and deep acting to regulate their emotions for image management.

The study found that surface actors showed much higher levels of psychological strain. Regulators were more likely to feel burned out and received less support from their coworkers. People do pick up on your emotional cues. By controlling their emotions for image management, they appear inauthentic and untrustworthy.

Deep actors reaped the most benefits. They felt better, didn’t tire as easily, and received more help from coworkers, both personal (listening to them) and at work (helping with tasks, giving advice).

Sources: Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today

Fake It till You Make It?

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