Consciously Exhibiting an Unfelt Emotion: The Case of Teacher Enthusiasm
Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
Final Report Abstract
There is a common belief that enthusiastic teachers enrich students’ achievement and motivation; however, it is unclear whether behaving enthusiastically is always beneficial for teachers, particularly if it is not accompanied by a congruent subjective experience. In three studies, I examined whether teachers report consciously attempting to express emotions that do not match their internal emotional state and if there is a detrimental effect of expressing enthusiasm while in an emotionally incongruent state. In Study 1, I descriptively examined how teachers regulate their emotions while in the classroom in a sample of practicing American teachers using open-ended survey questions that were developed based on the process model of emotion regulation. The results indicated that teachers frequently express emotions that are incongruent with their internal emotional state while in the classroom. Study 2 used teachers’ self-reported expressive behaviors and experiences of enjoyment while teaching to cross-sectionally find a group of teachers who faked enthusiasm and compared the occupational well-being of these teachers to teachers that expressed authentic enthusiasm. The results of this study indicated that there are teachers who express enthusiasm in the relative absence of teaching-related enjoyment and that these teachers have a lower occupational well-being than teachers who express authentic levels of enthusiasm. Study 3 experimentally extended the previous study by examining causality and the effects of displaying enthusiasm while either in an emotionally congruent, incongruent, or neutral emotional state. The results showed that expressing enthusiasm while in a negative or neutral emotional state did not negatively impact participants. However, expressing enthusiasm while angry also did not eliminate participants’ anger. This indicates that simply expressing an incongruent emotion does not erase the current experienced emotion when that emotion is negative. I had originally planned on examining whether students could differentiate between different displays of enthusiasm and if students differentially benefit from being taught by a teacher who expresses enthusiasm while in an emotionally congruent, incongruent, or neutral state. However, due to the small number of Stanford students who are required to participate in psychological experiments for course credit, I quickly realized that it was not feasible to run three experiments during my fellowship period. Furthermore, due to the dynamic nature of the expressed enthusiasm task in Study 3, I was not able to collect physiological measures. Understanding the consequences expressing enthusiasm while in an emotionally congruent, incongruent or neutral state has on individuals has important implications for teachers (e.g., with regards to when to behave enthusiastically) as well as for designing new interventions (e.g., focusing on the enhancement of positive emotions rather than fostering the mere expression of enthusiasm). Moreover, the findings have important implications for research on emotion regulation.
Publications
- (2017, April). Intrinsic emotion regulation from the perspective of teachers: A mixed-methods account of goals, strategies, and correlates. American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX
Taxer, J. L., & Gross, J. J.
- (2018). Inauthentic expressions of enthusiasm: Exploring the cost of emotional dissonance in teachers. Learning and Instruction, 53, 74-88
Taxer, J. L., & Frenzel, A. C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.07.008)
