Want a Snack at Work? An Investigation of Mood Repair and Self-Control Perspectives

Abstract

Based on the mood repair and self-control perspectives, we develop an integrative model that explored the antecedents, mechanisms, boundary conditions, and consequences of snacking at work. To test our integrative model, we employed the experience sampling method to collect daily data twice (i.e., the afternoon and evening surveys) for two weeks, resulting in 1,286 matched daily responses from 180 fulltime employees. The results of multilevel path analyses showed that: (a) daily activating negative moods increase unhealthy snacking at work via enhanced hedonic motive, and employees’ preference to eat palatable foods can strengthen such positive indirect effect; (b) although daily emotional job demands increase daily ego-depletion, the depleted states did not predict healthy snacking at work; (c) dispositional self-control capacity did not alter the strength of the self-control pathway to healthy snacking; (d) daily unhealthy snacking increases employees’ subsequent positive moods, whereas healthy snacking increases their subsequent vigor.