Emotion and Communication in the Workplace: Exploring Employees’ Emotional Experience and Communication Motives to Supervisors

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Abstract

The current study explores emotion and communication behaviors in the workplace. Specifically, the project assumes that employee emotional experience in the workplace would influence their communication motives to their supervisors. Emotional experience involves employees’ received emotional support from the supervisor, engaged emotion work, and emotional valence. These experiences, in turn, lead to employees’ diverse motives (enjoyment, affection, inclusion, escape, and control) for communicating with the supervisor. With the participants of N = 608, the study finds that employees’ received emotional support from the supervisor positively predicts their communication motives of enjoyment, inclusion, and inclusion. Employees’ emotional valence positively predicts enjoyment and affection motive. Finally, employees’ emotion work positively predicts affection motive to their supervisor. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Author

• Moyi Jia, Monmouth University