Emotion Eliciting Events in the Workplace: An Intercultural Comparison

Abstract

Different emotional experiences at the work place are evaluated in respect to their influence on job satisfaction. A sample of 75 Japanese employees and 169 German employees rated their emotional level following daily hassles in the work place that were attributed on the two dimensions: locus of causality and controllability. It was predicted that the same attribution pattern of daily hassles leads to different emotional responses and different levels of job satisfaction between employees with an interdependent and independent cultural background. Results indicate that equal attribution patterns of job related daily hassles lead to different emotional experiences between the two cultural groups and different levels of job satisfaction. It is argued that while emotions have a major influence on job satisfaction, this influence is culturally dependent. One element hereby is the explanation of the work related daily hassle.KeywordsDaily hasslesattributionsemotionsjob satisfactionGerman and Japanese employees