Emotion regulation in the workplace has received substantial attention from organizational scholars over the past four decades, with research flourishing in understanding both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes of how employees’ regulation of emotions impacts their own work outcomes. Although prior research has illuminated how emotion regulation operates at both the individual and dyadic levels, social interactions between emotional laborers and interaction partners do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, focal employees are likely to be influenced by their coworkers through observing and perceiving their emotion regulation towards their interaction partners. In this dissertation, I draw on person-environment fit theory and social comparison theory to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the interplay between a focal employee’s and coworkers’ emotion regulation, and in doing so address how perceived congruence and incongruence of their emotion regulation influence the focal employee’s work outcomes. Through a field study utilizing polynomial regression analysis (Study 1) and an experimental study manipulating emotion regulation congruence and incongruence (Study 2), I demonstrate that emotion regulation congruence benefits focal employees’ well-being through an improved sense of belongingness, while emotion regulation incongruence harms focal employees’ performance and well-being through upward social comparisons made by them. Additionally, although emotion regulation incongruence may potentially be beneficial as it leads to more downward social comparisons with coworkers, these comparisons fail to transmit the incongruence effect to focal employees’ performance and well-being. Overall, this dissertation provides both theoretical and practical implications for employees’ emotion regulation in the workplace.
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