Affect and favorable work outcomes: two longitudinal tests of the happy-productive worker thesis

This research examined relationships between alternative measures of affect and supervisory performance ratings. The first study showed that dispositi onal rather than state affect significantly predicted supervisory ratings o f performance over time. Since the measures of affect differed on both cont ent and temporal dimensions, a follow-up study was conducted to explicate t he results. The second study found that a pleasantness-based measure of dis positional affect (Berkman, 1971a) again predicted rated performance over t ime, but activation-based measures of both dispositional and state affect ( using PANAS scales) were not predictive of supervisory evaluations of perfo rmance. The implications of these findings in terms of research on affect a nd the longstanding pursuit of the happy-productive worker are discussed. C opyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.