What happens if we see a colleague crying? Have you ever felt afraid at work? How often do we laugh and rage on the job? We surveyed more than 2,000 people to reveal what everyone really feels about emotions in the workplace.
At the heart of it, science tells us, we have six universal emotions. In the late 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that these Big Six were apparent in all cultures. But which of them are we most likely to feel in our working culture?
TotalJobs surveyed 2,250 UK workers and managers and asked them to open up about their emotions in the workplace - here’s what they discovered.
Emotional triggers at work
Joy might seem like the dominant emotion in the workplace. But as ever, when feelings are involved, it’s more complicated than that.
Because in the workplace, emotions and their ‘suitability’ for sharing with our colleagues are tightly bound to our notions of professionalism, capability and status.
So what’s making us emotional at work? The survey reveals that the most common cause behind any workplace emotion isn’t actually the work - it’s who we’re working with.
UK workers said that 1 in 3 emotional events are triggered by a colleague, whereas only 2 in 10 are caused by a task. In short: it’s people, not projects.
Surprisingly, the survey discovered that men may be far more emotionally sensitive in the workplace than women.
Men were more than twice as likely as women to get emotional because their “ideas weren’t heard” or because they “were criticised”.
What’s more, men also seemed to be more emotionally invested in their projects than women. They were almost three times more likely than women to get emotional because a project went over budget, missed a deadline or got cancelled.
Meanwhile, women are feeling significantly more stressed at work than men.
What triggers our emotions if we’re a woman or a man
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Men were 1.6x more emotional than women about being criticised
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Men were 2.4x more emotional than women because their “ideas weren’t heard”
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Men were 2.5x more emotional than women about “having a fall out”
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Women were 25% more emotional than men about “stress/frustration”
This reveals things we’ll go deeper into later: men and women are socialised to display emotions differently, especially at work. And there’s an emotional cost to covering our emotions.
Keeping up appearances
How many of us are showing our true feelings at work? How much pressure is there in the UK’s working culture to hide our tears and fears behind a professional face?
It turns out that 6 in 10 people have experienced an emotion at work they felt they couldn’t express freely.
(You may notice that 2% of UK workers claim not to have experienced any of the Big Six emotions. We’re not sure what to feel about that either.)
When it comes to the less happy emotions, like sadness and anger, there’s a major gap between what we’re feeling and what we are prepared to show. Anger and disgust are the ones we’re most likely to hide from our colleagues.
Workplaces are environments of social expectations. This is one reason why people will suppress their emotions in the workplace: they fear being judged.
Once again, gender seems to play a big role here.
Anger is stereotypically seen as a more male trait. And sure enough, men do express more anger at work than women. But under the surface? Women are feeling just as angry as men.
Likewise, women and men look like they’re experiencing the same level of sadness at work. But women are putting on a brave face. Our survey tells us they’re actually feeling sadder than men – they’re just not showing it.
Clearly, men and women have different emotional responses to workplace issues. But these differences are not hard-wired in our brains.
The notions that women and more ‘nurturing’ and men are more ‘aggressive’ aren’t related to physiology. Research tells us that these ideas come from (and reinforce) social norms.
For example, women are more likely than men to report experiencing emotions associated with lack of power, such as fear, sadness, shame and guilt. Men, however, are more likely to report experiencing emotions associated with power, such as anger and pride.
In fact, emotions and power are inextricably linked. Not being heard is congruent with lacking in status. Similarly, sadness is associated with a lack of power in social settings such as the workplace.
Emotions through the ages
Everyone’s feelings evolve as they get older. So how do our emotions shift at work as we age?
Happily, joy and surprise at work are the most consistently high over our lifetimes. And we feel increasing able to express them as we grow older.
Joy in the workplace is key to keeping burnout, stress and disengagement at bay. In other words, it’s just good business practice.
Does your company spark joy? People get joy from their work when it resonates for them personally and when they believe their role is important to the organisation.
Here’s some more good news: we also get less sad, angry, disgusted and fearful as we age.
But interestingly, fear is the emotion that drops most dramatically. It falls from 77% of people aged 23-38 to just 45% of people aged 55-73.
This makes sense. In their early career, young people are in the process of creating their own professional identity.
And this often comes with a fear of doing the wrong thing – not only regarding their work but being seen to behave outside the prevailing workplace cultural or social norms.
But the fear associated with fitting in may pass as people spend more time in their work role. And as we become more experienced – gaining greater levels of capability, power and status – our fears of failure may also subside.
