The effect of expression of ambivalence and happiness on creative performance

Abstract

Leaders frequently assign creative tasks to their employees. Surprisingly, the effect of the emotions that leaders can express during task instructions has been poorly explored by the literature. Using the EASI (Emotion As a Social Information) theory, this paper aims at better understand how the emotions that a leader expresses during task instruction influence the creative performance of the employee. More specifically, this study aims at comparing the effect of expression of ambivalence, happiness and anger. Two laboratory experiments show that in terms of quantity of ideas, an angry leader significantly triggered better results than a happy leader, who triggered better results than an ambivalent leader. In terms of quality of ideas (i.e. their originality and their novelty), there was no difference between a happy and an ambivalent leader. However, a happy leader triggered better ideas than an angry leader. Future studies can explore the mechanisms mediating the effect of expression of emotions on creative performance. This paper extends the EASI theory (Van Kleef, 2009) with the exploration of the effect of expressing mixed emotions (ambivalence) in task instructions.