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This study aims to propose that providers should tailor recovery responses to consumers’ emotional states to improve evaluations and behavioral intentions.

A multi-study approach comprising field and lab data was used. The field study, conducted on the Boston public transport network during a weather crisis, sought to determine how a provider should deliver their recovery response to match the consumer’s affective state. In the lab studies, the importance of tailoring a recovery message to the consumer’s state is experimentally demonstrated while controlling for factors such as consumer brand involvement.

This study finds that an emotion-focused recovery emphasizing empathy should be given to those in an avoidance affective state (i.e. focused on the avoidance of negative outcomes) such as worry. A problem-focused recovery, in which the focus is on the process that led to the failure and the steps that will be taken to correct it, should be provided to those in an approach state (i.e. concerned with advancement and accomplishment) such as anger. This study also finds this effect is more salient under low involvement conditions.

Future research should examine how nonverbal behavior during recovery can be tailored to a consumer’s state.

Service providers are encouraged to tailor recovery messages to consumers’ affective states.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine matching recovery messages to affective states, an important contribution as service failures can elicit a wide variety of affective states that influence how consumers react to recovery messages.

To reconcile theoretical discrepancies between discrete emotion, dimensional emotion (positive vs. negative affect), and the circumplex model, we propose the bifurcation model of affect structure (BMAS). Based on complexity theory, this model explores how emotion as an adaptive complex system reacts to affective events through negative and positive feedback loops, resulting in self-organizing oscillation and transformations between three states: equilibrium emotion, discrete positive and negative emotion in the near-equilibrium state, and chaotic emotion. We argue that the BMAS is superior to the extant models in revealing the dynamic connections between emotions and the intensity of affective events in organizational settings.

Organizational behavior scholars have long recognized the importance of a variety of emotion-related phenomena in everyday work life. Indeed, after three decades, the span of research on emotions in the workplace encompasses a wide variety of affective variables such as emotional climate, emotional labor, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect, empathy, and more recently, specific emotions. Emotions operate in complex ways across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational) to exert influence on work behavior and outcomes, but their linkages to human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have not always been explicit or well understood. This chapter offers a review and integration of the bourgeoning research on discrete positive and negative emotions, offering insights about why these emotions are relevant to HRM policies and practices. We review some of the dominant theories that have emerged out of functionalist perspectives on emotions, connecting these to a strategic HRM framework. We then define and describe four discrete positive and negative emotions (fear, pride, guilt, and interest) highlighting how they relate to five HRM practices: (1) selection, (2) training/learning, (3) performance management, (4) incentives/rewards, and (5) employee voice. Following this, we discuss the emotion perception and regulation implications of these and other discrete emotions for leaders and HRM managers. We conclude with some challenges associated with understanding discrete emotions in organizations as well as some opportunities and future directions for improving our appreciation and understanding of the role of discrete emotional experiences in HRM.

The purpose of this article was to examine how individual positive emotions and team work engagement (TWE) relate to the perceptions of team viability.

A total of 254 teams (N = 1,154 individuals) participated in this study, and a multilevel analysis was conducted of the effects of individual and team-level factors.

The multilevel analysis results suggest a partial compensatory effect. High levels of individual positive emotions and high TWE are associated with a positive effect on the perceptions of team viability. Simultaneously, being part of a highly engaged team has a protective effect on perceptions of team viability, when individuals experience low levels of positive emotions.

As the study was conducted with teams involved in a management simulation, generalizing the results to “real world” teams must be done with caution.

Nonetheless, these findings have important implications for managers of work groups. They highlight the need to consider collective states of work groups as relevant for their effectiveness, and suggest that promoting positive interactions between team members may result in gains in team viability perceptions, mostly when individual emotions are less positive.

We consider both individual and collective affective experiences at work, and focus on a less studied outcome, team viability. Additionally, we empirically demonstrate the relevance of collective states of teams for team members’ individual perceptions, as a top-down influence mechanism.

In this chapter, we consider music as a tool for emotional regulation in relation to disability, which can be employed to counter the dehumanisation of disabled people that arises from unregulated emotional responses to disability. Responding to Julia Kristeva's presentation of non-disabled encounters with disability as causing a physical or psychical death, Alison Duncan Kerr's arguments on the rationality of regulating emotions in encounters where unregulated emotions have negative effects on the self and others are brought together through Rebecca Jiggens' cultural model of understanding the significance of disability to illustrate the irrationality and moral paucity of ableism. We argue that music can play a role in regulating the emotions typically felt towards the disabled. Kristeva's idea that disability wounds or even kills the abled is insightful, but if we are right, then the tight connection between death and emotional reactions to disability could be overcome through the process of emotion regulation.

In a computer-based experimental study, we explored intensity of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences (affect), following immediate outcomes of risky choices over time under three levels of uncertainty (80%, 50%, 20%). We found that the intensity of pleasant affect initially increased linearly before suddenly reducing after the seventh task, and then resumed the linear upward trend. In contrast, the intensity of unpleasant affect cyclically changed after every five decision tasks, displaying a wave-like pattern. Interestingly, the 50% probability (maximum information entropy) group demonstrated patterns quite different to the other two groups (20%, 80%). For pleasant affect, this group reduced in positive affect significantly more than the other two groups after the seventh decision task. For unpleasant affect, the 50% group displayed an increasing negative affect trend, while the other two groups displayed a reducing negative affect trend. In sum, our findings reveal different temporal patterns of pleasant emotions from correct decisions and unpleasant emotions resulting from wrong decisions. We conclude that, consistent with the self-organization theory, these differences reflect nonlinear changes in the emotional system to cope with the challenge of uncertainty (or entropy).

While emotions and feelings arise in the singular personality, they may also develop a normative dimensionality in a plural agency. The authors identify the cybernetic systemic principles of how emotions might be normatively regulated and affect plural agency performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a generic cultural socio-cognitive trait theory of plural affective agency (the emotional organization), involving interactive cognitive and affective traits, and these play a role within the contexts of Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A).

The authors integrate James Gross’ model of emotion regulation with the earlier work on normative personality in the context of Mindset Agency Theory. The agency is a socio-cognitive entity with attitude, and operates through traits that control thinking and decision making. These traits are epistemically independent and operate on a bipolar scale; with the alternate poles having an auxiliary function to each other – where the traits may take intermediary “balanced” states between the poles.

Processes of affect regulation are supposed to go through three stages: first, identification (affective situation awareness); second, elaboration of affect is constituted through schemas of emotional feeling, which include emotion ideologies generating emotional responses to distinct contextual situations; third, execution: in the operative system primary emotions are assessed through operative intelligence for any adaptive information and the capacity to organize action; and turned into action, i.e. responses, through cultural feeling rules and socio-cultural display rules, conforming to emotion ideologies.

This new theory provides guidance for framing multilevel interaction where smaller collectives (as social systems) are embedded into larger social systems with a culture, an emotional climate and institutions. Thus, it is providing a generic theoretical frame for M & A analyses, where a smaller social unit (the acquired) is to be integrated into a larger social unit (the acquirer).

Understanding interdependencies between cognition and emotion regulation is a prerequisite of managerial intelligence, which is at demand during M & A processes. While managerial intelligence may be grossly defined as the capacity of management to find an appropriate and fruitful balance between action and learning orientation of an organization, its affective equivalent is the capacity of management to find a fruitful balance between established emotion expression and learning alternate forms of emotion expression.

Understanding interdependencies between cognition and emotion is a prerequisite of social, cultural and emotional intelligence. The provided theory can be easily linked with empirical work on the emergence of a cultural climate of fear within societies. Thus, “Affective Agency Theory” also has a bearing for political systems’ analysis, what, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper builds on the recently developed Mindset Agency Theory, elaborating it through the introduction of the dimension of affect, where cognitive and affective traits interact and become responsible for patterns of behaviour. The model is providing a framework which links emotion expression and emotion regulation with cognitive analysis.

This study explores the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers in the financial product market. More precisely, it examines how the integrative effects of rationality, emotions and personality traits influence the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers when making financial product purchase decisions.

The study employs a quantitative research approach, utilising a survey strategy. The proposed conceptual model was tested using structural equation modelling (AMOS) on a valid 357 responses from Australian female consumers.

The findings revealed that rationality, self-efficacy and impulsivity have a positive impact on the decision-making powers of Australian female consumers. Besides this, self-efficacy and anxiety had significant moderating effects on the decision-making power of Australian female consumers when buying financial products, whereas anger and impulsivity were found to have no moderating effects.

The study offers understanding on the role of emotions and personality traits in financial decision-making, which can help financial institutions design sound products and services that can also ensure consumers' overall well-being.

Informed by the theoretical notions of the appraisal-tendency framework (ATF) and emotion-imbued choice model (EIC), the study makes a unique contribution by investigating the impact of rationality, emotions and personality traits on the decision-making powers of female consumers in the Australian financial product market.

The use of insects as food is a proposed solution for the increased demand for food worldwide, but it lacks acceptance because of restrictive emotional factors. This article aims to understand better customers' emotions’ role in considering and consuming insect-based food.

To assess their acceptance, an experiment was developed with 38 participants living in Portugal to identify how people feel when consuming processed insect bars compared to cereal bars (of equal flavour). A video was recorded “before”, “during” and “after” the consumption of such foods, and the triggered emotions and affective states were identified using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and the circumplex model of affect, respectively. After consumption, the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) was asked to be completed.

It was observed that the valence and arousal of the emotions and affective states triggered during consumption were higher in the insect bar than in the cereal bar. Its consumption resulted in surprise and a positive evaluation. Processed insect-based foods may result in a potentially increased acceptance of this new food alternative in the market.

Prior studies briefly identified disgust as a primary emotion activated by insect-based food. The current research deeply studied emotional responses to insect-based processed foods in the Western world using the dimensional emotional models. This study offers arguments for the insect-based food industry to invest in processed food justified by its potential for acceptance. In addition, it motivates further research focused on other insect-based products (e.g. non-processed ones).

The literature to-date has focused on dimensions of emotions based on emotions’ affective state (captured by valence, arousal and dominance, PAD). However, it has ignored that emotional reactions also depend on emotions’ functionality in serving to solve recurrent adaptive problems related to survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychology suggests that relationships with others are the key that helps individuals reach both goals. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize, measure and validate the temperature dimension of emotions that underlies such human relationships, as suggested by frequent verbalization of emotional states via temperature-related terms (“cold fear” and “warm love”).

Across three studies (n_Study1a = 71; n_Study1b = 33; and n_Study2 = 317) based on samples from two countries (Germany and the USA) and using two different methods (semantic and visual), the temperature dimension of emotions is conceptualized and measured. Across a wide spectrum of emotions, factor analyses uncover temperature as an emotional dimension distinct from PAD and assess the dimension’s face, discriminant, convergent, nomological and criterion validity.

Emotional temperature is a bipolar dimension of an affective state that underlies human relationships, ranging from cold to warm, such that social closeness is linked to emotional warmth and social distance to emotional coldness. Emotional temperature is uncovered as a dimension distinct from PAD, that is, it is correlated with but separate from PAD.

In this research, a portfolio of 17 basic emotions relevant in everyday consumption contexts was examined. Future research could further refine the emotional temperature dimension by analyzing more complex emotions and their position on the temperature map. In general, this paper sets the stage for additional work examining emotional temperature and its effects on consumer behavior.

The results have strategic implications for marketers on which emotions to select for campaigns, depending on factors like the climate or season.

This research provides a better foundation upon which to understand the effect of emotions that invoke warmth or coldness.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to conceptualize, measure and comprehensively validate the temperature dimension of emotions.