Real-time affect at work: A neglected phenomenon in organisational behaviour

This paper describes a program of research on real time affect while working. Three sets of hypotheses were tested in a data set comprising fifty reports of momentary affect from each of 120 respondents. Between and within-person analyses were used to explore the correlates of aggregated and momentary affect. Findings suggest that: (i) average real time affect at work shares some variance with job satisfaction, but is not isomorphic with it; (ii) average positive and negative affect have somewhat different antecedents and consequences; and (iii) most people experience a strong within-person relationship between momentary affect and concurrent perceptions of task performance.