sad at funerals regardless of whether we consider the person's death to be a loss;
and to pretend to be happy at weddings even if we don't feel like celebrating.54
Effective managers have learned to be serious when giving an employee a nega-
tive performance evaluation and to cover up their anger when they've been
passed over for promotion. And the salesperson who hasn't learned to smile and
appear friendly, regardless of his or her true feelings at the moment, isn't typi-
cally going to last long on most sales jobs.
   &;    The key point here is that felt and displayed emotions are often different. In
fact, many people have problems working with others simply because they naively
assume that the emotions they see others display is what those others actually feel.
This is particularly true in organizations, where role demands and situations often
require people to exhibit emotional behaviors that mask their true feelings.

EMOTION DIMENSIONS

How many emotions are there? In what ways do they vary? We'll answer these
questions in this section.

Variety   There have been numerous efforts to limit and define the fundamental
or basic set of emotions.55 Research has identifed six universal emotions: anger,
fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise.56
       One factor that has strongly shaped what is and isn't listed in this basic set is
the manner in which emotions were identified. Researchers tended to look for
universally identified facial expressions and then convert them into categories
(see Exhibit 4-5). Emotions that couldn't be readily identified by others through
facial expressions, or which were considered a subset of one of the basic six, were
not selected.
       Exhibit 4-6 illustrates that the six emotions can be conceptualized as exist-
ing along a continuum.57 The closer any two emotions are to each other on this
continuum, the more people are likely to confuse them. For instance, happiness
and surprise are frequently mistaken for each other, while happiness and disgust
are rarely confused. In addition, as we'll elaborate on later in this section, cultural
factors can also influence interpretations.  
 

felt emotions
An individual's actual
emotions

displayed emotions
Emotions that are
organizationally required and
considered appropriate in a
given job.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      Facial Expressions Convey Emotions
Emotions Each picture portrays
a different emotion.
Try to identify them
before looking at
the answers. (Top,
left to right: neutral,
surprise, happiness.
Bottom: fear,
sadness, anger.)
Source: S. E. Taylor, L. A. Peplan, and D. O. Sears, Social Psychology, 9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1997), p. 98; photographs by Paul Ekman, Ph.D. Used with permission.


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