Amy Wax

Moving emotional labor beyond surface and deep acting A discordance–congruence perspective

Emotional labor (EL) is the process by which employees manage their true feelings in order to express organizationally desired emotional displays. We develop and test components of an organizing framework for emotional labor wherein various aspects of emotional labor are understood through the underlying discordance versus congruence in felt versus displayed emotions. Meta-analytic results from 109 independent studies (total N = 36,619) demonstrate that discordant emotional labor states are associated with a range of harmful consequences (health-, attitudinal-, and performance-related), whereas congruent emotional labor states do not incur these harmful consequences. We identify different patterns of worker- and work-related correlates on the basis of emotional discordance–congruence, as well as interesting occupational differences in these relationships. Lastly, we find discordant forms of emotional labor partially mediate the effects of organizational display rules on burnout, whereas congruent states do not mediate this relationship.

The benefit of full disclosure: A meta-analysis of the implications of coming out at work

Disclosure of sexual orientation in the workplace is a communication exchange wherein an individual reveals his/her sexual orientation to coworkers, to one extent or another. Although there have been a number of empirical studies on disclosure in the workplace, the literature has never been systematically reviewed. The current study meta-analyzed 24 primary studies in order to elucidate the relationship between workplace sexual orientation disclosure and individual, relational, and organizational correlates. Results indicated that disclosure is most strongly related to organizational climate, suggesting that the organization has a substantial impact on individual disclosure decisions.

Commuter College Student Adjustment: Peer Crowd Affiliation as a Driver of Loneliness, Belongingness, and Risk Behaviors

Although previous research has clearly demonstrated the impact that peer crowd affiliation has on socioemotional and risk-related outcomes, very few studies have investigated this relation in samples of emerging adults, and even fewer have focused specifically on commuter college students. Accordingly, the current study aimed to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between peer crowds and college adjustment at a commuter school. Participants were 663 students at a large public university in Southern California (campus population of 92% commuters). Factor analytic results indicated the presence of four crowd dimensions on campus: (a) social/partiers, (b) creatives and activists, (c) campus active, and (d) international students. Furthermore, path analysis results indicated that these crowd dimensions predict loneliness, college belongingness, and risk behaviors. Overall, the results of this study indicate the presence of a peer crowd landscape unique to commuter schools that has important implications for student adjustment.

Self-Organizing Into Winning Teams: Understanding the Mechanisms That Drive Successful Collaborations

Contemporary teams are self-assembling with increasing frequency, meaning the component members are choosing to join forces with some degree of agency rather than being assigned to work with one another. However, the majority of the teams literature up until this point has focused on randomly assigned or staffed teams. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to investigate how people do form into teams and how people should form into teams. Specifically, we utilized a sample of digital traces from a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (N = 1,568) to evaluate the bases for and performance implications of team self-assembly. The results indicated that self-assembled teams form via three mechanisms: homophily, familiarity, and proximity. Moreover, results of the trace data analyses indicated that successful and unsuccessful teams were homogeneous in terms of different characteristics, and successful teams formed based on friendship more often than unsuccessful teams did.