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Emotional Ambivalence Contextualized: The Antecedents and Consequences of Daily Affective Profiles During Pregnancy

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Journal of Organizational Behavior

Published online on

Abstract

["Journal of Organizational Behavior, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nResearch has increasingly highlighted the prevalence of emotionally ambivalent experiences for employees at work, with several self‐regulatory benefits emerging. Yet we do not have a full understanding of which work‐related contexts yield generative or maladaptive consequences of emotional ambivalence. Drawing on theories of emotional ambivalence and self‐regulation at work, we explore the nature, antecedents, and consequences of profiles of daily affective experiences among pregnant employees—consisting of anxiety, anger, fatigue, vigor, and pride. Across two daily experience sampling studies capturing 279 pregnant employees across 2408 days of data, we find four profiles of daily affective experiences, with women experiencing more ambivalent (i.e., strongly mixed) profiles incurring the most hindered outcomes, challenging previous findings on the self‐regulatory benefits of emotional ambivalence within organizational research. In contrast, women in more positive profiles (i.e., positives) reaped the greatest benefits, suggesting that positive affective experiences are beneficial only when they are conjointly felt with lower negative affective states—a more univalent experience rather than an ambivalent one. Combined, our research extends the emotional ambivalence literature by showing that in liminal contexts, such as working during pregnancy, where discretion and autonomy may be limited, emotional ambivalence can contribute to adverse performance and well‐being outcomes.\n"]