Emotions in and around performance: The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat

Experience sampling studies have shown that mood and emotions at work vary considerably over short periods of time (Fisher & Noble, 2000). The search for potential causes of this fluctuation must focus on equally transient stimuli. Logical candidates to cause emotion fluctuations at work are appraisals related to what one is doing and to how well one is doing it at the moment. The next section considers main effects of task characteristics on emotions during task engagement. The subsequent section builds the case that perceived performance can be a potent contributor to emotions experienced at work and suggests the specific emotions most likely to occur as a consequence of performance. Following that, attention is given to anticipatory emotions in advance of performance events, and relived emotions well after performance events. Finally, I discuss work setting and individual difference features that may result in differential affective reactivity to perceived performance.