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Three young women who had been friends at university met up for a reunion lunch. All had been working for almost three years, one as journalist, one for a financial institution and the third for a London‐based Web‐site design company. After talk of old friends and new relationships, hairstyles, fashion and how good the cappuccino tasted, the conversation got down, as it does, to work. All three had decided that, after their huge experience (three years that is!) in the world of working for a living, they were all seeking “a change of direction”.

Using mood regulation theories and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, the purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors aimed at individuals (OCB-Is) and depressed mood, burnout, and satisfaction with life and health would be mediated by positive affect.

Lagged data were collected from employee-supervisor dyads.

OCB-Is were related to positive affect, and positive affect was positively related to subsequent reports of life satisfaction and general health satisfaction, and negatively related to burnout and depressed mood. Positive affect mediated the relationship between OCB-Is and life satisfaction, general health satisfaction, and depressed mood but not burnout. An alternative reverse causality mediation model ruled out the possibility that OCB-Is mediated the relationship between positive affect and the employee outcomes.

These findings lend support for OCBs being an antecedent of mood, rather than vice versa.