Events

Prof. Michael Parke
Assistant Professor of Management
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

Existing research on voice often suggests that employees should minimize or avoid expressing negative emotions when raising work-related issues or ideas because such negative expressions can cause managers to discredit or discount their voice. We aim to shift this belief to propose that the act of verbalizing one’s negative feelings (i.e., affect labeling) when raising issues to managers can help transform negative feelings (e.g., frustration or anxiety) from being seen as a harmful disruption to being seen as useful data. Drawing on self-disclosure research and the social-functional approach to emotions, we hypothesize that voicers’ use of affect labeling of negative emotions enhances (rather than detracts from) their credibility, thus leading to higher voice endorsement from managers. We find support for these hypotheses across three studies using field and experimental methodologies. Additionally, we explore a situational moderator (issue ambiguity) and three micro-mechanisms (vulnerability, self-control, and affective information) that further expand our understanding of the effects of voicer affect labeling. Our findings offer a counterpoint to the conventional wisdom that employees should avoid expressing their negative emotions when speaking up with ideas or issues; instead, we find that employees can label their negative feelings and still offer credible and compelling voice.