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3 - Personality Affect Construal Theory

A Model of Personality and Affect in the Workplace

from Part I - Theoretical and Methodological Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2020

By
Stuti Thapa ,
Emorie D. Beck  and
Louis Tay
Edited by
Liu-Qin Yang ,
Russell Cropanzano ,
Catherine S. Daus  and
Vicente Martínez-Tur
Liu-Qin Yang
Affiliation:
Portland State University
Russell Cropanzano
Affiliation:
University of Colorado
Catherine S. Daus
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Vicente Martínez-Tur
Affiliation:
Universitat de València, Spain
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Summary

Even decades after the affective revolution (Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017), affect remains an integral part of organizational psychology. The two primary perspectives in affective research center on affect as a dispositional construct (i.e. a trait) or a momentary construct (i.e. a state) (Brief & Weiss, 2002). Dispositional perspectives of affect refer to a general tendency to experience certain types and levels of affective state. This can reflect personality traits and affective dispositions (Watson & Clark, 1984; Watson & Tellegen, 2002). Momentary affect refers to emotions experienced in the moment, including both the valence of feelings (i.e. positive, negative) and discrete emotions (e.g. guilt, awe). Integrating person, situation, and emotional construal perspectives, this chapter seeks to incorporate decades of work on affective dispositions, momentary affect, and personality to present a conceptual model that specifies how these come together to produce in-the-moment emotions embedded in specific situations. In doing so, we provide theoretical specificity connecting these dispositional and momentary perspectives, answering the call for more multi-level and systems-based theories: for example, how does personality unfold to impact state-level emotions (Ilies, Schwind, & Heller, 2007)?

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The Cambridge Handbook of Workplace Affect , pp. 37 - 51
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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