Acute Events and Emotional Dissonance in organiztion

Emotional dissonance, a component of emotional labour, is defined as the discrepancy between the emotions employees are required to display as part of their job and those they truly feel. It has been found that the existence of such dissonance can be a stressful aspect of emotion at work and leads to feelings of falseness and in-authenticity. These feelings are tied to such detrimental long term effects as emotional exhaustion and burnout, job dissatisfaction, and depression. One factor found to determine an employee's level of emotional dissonance is acute emotional events. Defined as those events that occur within the context of ones daily work routine that lead to more or less emotional regulation, these events are appraised by the employee for their well-being. An atypical positive experience with a customer may serve to reduce the emotional dissonance of an employee by aligning emotions required with those felt, while a negative experience may serve to do the opposite.this paper suggest that the earlier an acute emotional event occurs within the workday, the larger the effect it will have on the total emotional dissonance experienced throughout that day as it sets the ‘tone' for the day. Assuming the employee chooses to adhere to the organizationally prescribed emotional displays, this change in dissonance has a direct relationship to the level of emotional labour exerted by that employee. However, regardless of the whether the employee displays the organizationally desired emotions, the well-being of the organization as a whole will be affected.

Keywords:

Emotional dissonance , Emotional labor , , Emotional labor consequences , Emotional Events , Emotional displays