Coping with negative emotions: Interpersonal effects in organizational settings

Drawing on a social functional account of emotions, we explored how different coping approaches (i.e., suppressing, bursting, and sharing) provide information that coworkers use to form interpersonal perceptions (i.e., perceived warmth and competence), and whether these perceptions, in turn, affect coworkers’ behavior toward the target employees (i.e., helping or harming). Our survey data from 139 coworker dyads revealed that different coping approaches had distinct effects on perceptions. Coworkers perceived employees who suppressed negative feelings as warm, those who burst with negative emotions as less competent, and those who shared negative emotional experiences as both warm and competent. Coworkers were more helpful and less inclined to harm employees they perceived as warm and competent. These findings extend the literature on the interpersonal outcomes of coping.