My topic: An Emotion Shredder APP for working women

Academic Research

Before I start my research, I had these questions in my mind:

  • Why women? Why only women? Despite the psychology research that I remember reading, can I find more evidence to support the claim that women deal with emotions differently/need more support in dealing with emotions in work settings? Is it more towards one gender group or more universal in real life?
  • How does building connections and feeling understood help people deal with negative emotions in work?
  • What are common emotions in work that have been bothering people?
The Relevance of Discrete Emotional Experiences for Human Resource Management: Connecting Positive and Negative Emotions to HRM

In the research paper, it talked about different categories of emotions that may arise in work: within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational. It specifically studies the discrete positive and negative emotions since they are more explicit to define and measure without intervening with people’s daily work. The researchers found that “fear, pride, guilt, and interest” are the most common negative emotions among the employees. In addition to the prevalence of discrete emotional experiences at work, employees often engage in behaviors to increase, decrease, or maintain their emotions (Grandey, 2000), which suggest that employees frequently exert effort to control their emotional responses. The emotion regulation may often be viewed as a process to enhance positive feeling states. They also mentioned that dealing with extreme negative emotions in urgent situations can be pretty helpful for facilitating progress in hard tasks.

The findings are pretty helpful for my project since it explains the cause of emotions and effects of dealing with them in different manners. It reminds me that dealing with emotions is an active mental process instead of a “task” or “immediate response”. Having the negative emotions may not be the point or be the worst things. Instead, I can focus more on the process of dealing with these emotions. How can we help employees build the capabilities to deal with negative emotions in different setting, for the sake of better work, life and mental conditions?

Dream Review

“The AR APP project made by the IMA graduate student stands as a great example of using social media and technology healthily instead of excessively in the modern era. It magically balances human’s creativity and emotional needs in the work setting. Putting focus more in the process of realizing, visualizing, and then interacting with one’s emotions, it turns the annoying emotional conditions in our daily work life into a transferable experience that could be meaningful for anyone to reconnect with oneself or others.”