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To provide a comprehensive review of theoretical and research advances in affect control theory from 1988 to 2013 for academic and student researchers in social psychology.

Against the background of a concise history of affect control theory from its beginnings in the 1960s to its maturation in the late 1980s, a comprehensive review of research and publications in the last 25 years is reported in five sections: Theoretical Advances (e.g., self and institutions, nonverbal behavior, neuroscience, artificial intelligence); Technological Advances (e.g., electronic data collection, computer simulations, cultural surveys, equation refinement, small groups analysis); Cross-Cultural Research (archived data and published analyses); Empirical Tests of the Theory; and Substantive Applications (e.g., emotions, social and cultural change, occupations/work, politics, gender/ideology/subcultures, deviance, criminology, stereotyping, physiological behavior).

Reveals an impressive number of publications in this area, including over 120 articles and chapters and four major books, and a great deal of cross-cultural research, including European, Asian, and Middle-Asian cultures.

Because of limitations of space, the review does not cover the large number of theses, dissertations, and research reports.

No other review of affect control theory with this scope and detail exists.

This paper works at the intersections of affect control theory, expectation states theory, and social influence network theory. First, we introduce social influence network theory into affect control theory. We show how an influence network may emerge from the pattern of interpersonal sentiments in a group and how the fundamental sentiments that are at the core of affect control theory (dealing with the evaluation, potency, and activity of self and others) may be modified by interpersonal influences. Second, we bring affect control theory and social influence network theory to bear on expectation states theory. In a task-oriented group, where persons’ performance expectations may be a major basis of their interpersonal influence, we argue that persons’ fundamental sentiments may mediate effects of status characteristics on group members’ performance expectations. Based on the linkage of fundamental sentiments and interpersonal influence, we develop an account of the formation of influence networks in groups that is applicable to both status homogeneous and status heterogeneous groups of any size, whether or not they are completely connected, and that is not restricted in scope to task-oriented groups.

Identifies where status and identity processes converge in social interaction and when one process may become more consequential than the other.

Drawing upon existing experimental data, we illustrate how affect control theory and status characteristics theory make seemingly contradictory predictions in certain limited interactions and propose a theoretical framework to potentially reconcile these differences.

Three pivot points are identified at which status and identity processes meet and then one of the processes more strongly predicts interaction outcomes.

The chapter represents a starting point for future research examining situations where status and identity processes converge.

We suggest ways to empirically test related claims made by both theories in an array of circumstances.

Research on self-regulation has tended to focus on goal-related performance, with limited attention paid to individuals’ affect and the role it plays during the goal-striving process. In this chapter we discuss three mechanisms to integrate affect within a control theory-based self-regulation framework, and how such integrations inform future research concerning employee stress and well-being. Specifically, affect can be viewed as a result of velocity made toward one’s desired states at work. Fast progress results in positive affect, which enhances employee well-being and reduces the detrimental effects associated with exposure to occupational stressors. On the other hand, slow or no progress elicits negative affect, which induces employee distress. Second, affect can also be considered an input of self-regulation, such that employees are required to regulate their emotional displays at work. Employees who perform emotional labor compare their actual emotional display against the desired display prescribed by display rules. Third, affect can function as a situational disturbance, altering employees’ perceptions or assessments of the input, comparator, and output for other self-regulatory processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explain theoretically the relation between large shareholders, legal institutions, and capital structure, then empirically deduce how large shareholders and legal institution affected capital structure decision by integrating Chinese institutions.

This paper adopted cross‐section data of non‐financial listed companies in China and applied series of ordinary least square to empirically test the relationship between large shareholders, legal institution, and capital structure decision.

The empirical evidence provided by this paper indicates that large shareholders and legal institution do affect capital structure decision, specifically in seven areas.

This paper, based on the institutions of China, takes the largest shareholder, ultimately the controller, the relation of legal institution and capital structure into the research framework for the first time and systematically studies how the capital structure decision making is affected by the controlling shareholders, the nature of ultimately controllers, the concentration degree of shares held by a few large shareholders and legal institution. It is the first to empirically test whether the concentration degree of shares held by a few large shareholders and legal institution will affect the relation between controlling shareholders and capital structure, and compensates for the deficiencies in previous studies.

After a vigorous debate in the late 1970s, the sociology of emotion put aside most discussion of whether or not the physiological arousal associated with emotion labels is differentiated. Since this early period, scholars have made great progress on two fronts. First, theories about the interrelationship of identity, action and emotion have specified a family of new concepts related to emotion. Second, a large corpus of research on the physiological correlates of emotional experience emerged. In this chapter, we review the well-developed control theories of identity and emotion, and focus on the key concepts that might relate to different physiological states. We then review the general classes of physiological measures, discussing their reliability, intrusiveness and other features that might determine their usefulness for tracking responses to social interaction. We then offer a highly provisional mapping of physiological measures onto the concepts that they might potentially measure, given past research about how these physiological processes relate to environmental stimuli. While any linkage between concepts and measures must be speculative at this point, we hope that this review will serve as a stimulus to theoretically guided research that begins to assess the validity of these new measures for sociological use.

This research examines the interactive effect of accounting controls (Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets, External scanning, Results monitoring and Cost control) and task uncertainty on budgetary slack with a sample of 104 marketing and production managers. The results indicate that two accounting controls (Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets and External scanning) reduce the extent of budgetary slack creation in high task uncertainty situations, but not in low task uncertainty situations. Budgetary slack is lowest when the intensity of accounting controls and task uncertainty are both high. Whilst Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets has a significant effect on slack for both the production and marketing managers, External scanning has a significant effect only for the marketing managers.

Existing theoretical explanations about the influence of affect in the process of creating ideas (ideation) and their corresponding empirical findings are contradictory. The purpose of the present chapter is to provide new insights by providing a theoretical explanation that is able to encompass these contradictions, and to support this theoretical approach with empirical data. We draw on personality-systems-interactions (PSI) and use an experimental design to capture dynamic effects between affect and ideation. Our findings emphasize the mediating role of affect in the ideation process and the moderating role of individual action-control in the regulation of affect and respective creative behavior.

Action–state orientation (ASO) describes the ability to plan, initiate, and complete intended activities. Action-oriented individuals, compared to state-oriented, are better able to focus their efforts and therefore move toward goals. While Kuhl (1994) posits that affect mediates the relationship between personality traits like ASO and successful self-regulation, ASO scholarship rarely examines the role of affect, and no ASO studies have examined self-regulation over time. We address these limitations by examining students’ academic self-regulation over a semester. HLM analyses show that action- versus state-oriented people exhibit better academic self-regulation as expected. However, we found no support for affect as a mediator.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the challenges in knowledge outcome (e.g. knowledge contribution, knowledge exploration) improvement at the post-adoption phase in the context of e-communities. This study develops a model by integrating dedication-constraint framework and self-presentation theory. The model proposes that knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption phase rely on relationship development between community members, conceptualized as commitment. The authors also hypothesize that members’ perceived online self-presentation quality, theorized as personal control and social influence, serves as the key means to motivate members’ commitment.

This study used survey instrument to collect data and adopted partial least squares to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that perceived online self-presentation quality positively affects relationship development, which in turn affects continuance intention for knowledge outcomes.

This study expands the dedication-constraint framework by integrating the self-presentation theory. This study contributes new knowledge by proposing a model that delineates the relationship between online self-presentation quality, relationship development, and knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption stage.

This study shows that members’ perceived online self-presentation quality affects both affective commitment and calculative commitment, which in turn affect knowledge outcomes, suggesting the important role of the perceived quality in stimulating a member’s post-adoption reactions.

This study contributes to the research on post-adoption behavior in an e-community context by accounting for the influence of e-community features in self-presentation quality and dedication-constraint mechanisms on post-adoption phenomena.