Regulation of Feelings at Work and the Pursuit of Goals
The workplace can be a pressured environment where people must strive to achieve their goals. To meet objectives staff must decide on a course of action, take the first step and persist despite setbacks. Some people are better able to initiate and maintain intentions than others. In the last decade or so psychologists have suggested that a personal attribute they have called "action-state orientation" underlies this difference in ability to implement a goal and strive towards it. People with an "action-orientation" are able to devote their mental resources to the task in hand whereas people with a "state-orientation" tend to have persistent thoughts about other goals or their emotions and these thoughts reduce the mental resources available to pursue their goal.
A recently published article by Dutch researchers, Sander Koole and Nils Jostmann, has suggested that this difference may be linked to a person's ability to regulate their emotional response to pressured situations. In his well-known book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, Daniel Goleman states that when faced with a setback some people are able to regulate their emotional response and maintain high performance whereas others can become "hijacked" by their emotions. Koole and Jostmann propose that a person who intuitively regulates their emotional response to stressful situations will be able to pursue their goals successfully even under stressful circumstances. They carried out a series of studies to examine this proposed link using a measure of action-state orientation called the Action Control Scale. They wanted to find out whether people with high levels of action-orientation reacted differently to demanding situations compared with people with high levels of state-orientation. They found strong evidence that people with high levels of action-orientation were able to regulate their emotional response in a way that people with high levels of state-orientation were not. Interestingly they found this difference only when the situation was stressful.
What are the implications for the workplace?
A US team carried out research looking at action- versus state-orientation in the workplace (Diefendorff, Hall, Lord & Strean, 2000). They found that supervisor ratings of job performance were strongly predicted by a person's score on the Action Control Scale, that is people with an action-orientation were given higher performance ratings than people with a state-orientation. They also found that action-state orientation is not related to cognitive ability and is not strongly related to "big five" personality measures. This suggests that measuring someone's action-state orientation tells us something in addition to measuring their cognitive ability and personality.
How can Human Assets help?
The concept of action-state orientation and the Action Control Scale measure offers a different perspective on understanding why some people are better able to make plans, take the first step and persist despite setbacks. As a firm of occupational psychologists we take ideas such as these and bridge the gap between the theoretical world of psychological research and the practical world of work. We take an active interest in research that increases knowledge of behaviour in the workplace and we have the expertise to apply that knowledge and enable you to reap the business benefits. Human Assets uses psychological research in the design of development programmes, tailored to your organisation, to facilitate team development and help staff members identify their strengths and areas for development. We also offer coaching to help individuals to manage their reactions to demanding situations at work and maintain high performance.
If you would like to find out more, please contact our consultants at enquiries@humanassets.co.uk or on +44(0)20 7434 2122.
References
Diefendorff, J.M., Hall, R.J., Lord, R.G., & Strean, M.L. (2000). Action-State Orientation: Construct Validity of a Revised Measure and Its Relationship to Work-Related Variables. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 250-263.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. London: Bloomsbury.
Koole, S.L. & Jostmann, N.B. (2004). Getting a Grip on Your Feelings: Effects of Action Orientation and External Demands on Intuitive Affect Regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 974-990.
Newsletter: March 2005