You Spin Me Right Round: A Within-Person Examination of Affect Spin and Voluntary Work Behavior

Abstract

The current study extends prior research on emotional dynamics within the workplace by examining workplace correlates of within-person affect spin—a form of variability in affect states. Drawing from affective events theory, the current study tests both concurrent and lagged associations between work events, daily affect spin, mood, and daily voluntary workplace behaviors in a 2-week daily diary study of 114 working adults. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that levels of daily affect spin were higher on days in which employees experienced mixed work events (i.e., both positive and negative work events on the same day) compared to days with only positive work events or no work events. Results revealed that daily affect spin was indirectly related to daily organizational citizenship behavior through lower pleasant mood. Lagged analyses suggest the effects of daily spin on mood and voluntary work behaviors may not carry over to the next day. Our findings build upon prior between-person research on affect spin by providing evidence that affect spin can be meaningfully assessed at the within-person level of analysis. Moreover, this article extends prior research and theory by showing that affect spin is an important correlate of workplace events, mood, and voluntary work behavior at the within-person level.