Emotions have a fundamental influence on core organizational phenomena ranging from team performance to psychological wellbeing. Findings from multiple independent research streams supports the notion that emotions can spread contagious between individuals, altering their behavior in important ways. Despite the importance of understanding the social spread of emotions, existing knowledge is limited in three core ways: (1) current understanding of emotional contagion does not adequately account for contextual influences on the spread of emotions, (2) existing theoretical work does not well-explain how emotional contagion can influence complex social behavior, and (3) research has not effectively examined differences in the role of different discrete emotions in the contagion process. To address these issues, this thesis integrates the social functional perspective of emotions with work on social perceptions and emotional contagion to propose and test theoretical predictions related to how contextual characteristics influence individuals' underlying social goals, which in turn are tied to the manner in which emotions spread between individuals. These predictions were testing in a daily diary study based on 82 participants. Results of the study suggest that the spread of different emotions has important associations with workplace behaviors, and are moderated by social perceptions, individual differences, and the context of coworker interactions. The results of this thesis provide a strong foundation for improving future work in relation to both theory and practice.
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