Leader State Emotions in Organizations

Abstract

As the affective revolution continues to shape the way in which scholars understand applied psychology and organizations, we build upon the central tenets of this movement and explore the nexus of leadership and state emotions. By integrating previous conceptualizations, which have extensively studied the intersection of discrete emotions, we present an integrative framework of leader state emotions that outlines how emotional triggers, leader emotional regulation, and follower reactions relate to one another. Using this framework as a guide, we take stock of the extant research on leader emotions by evaluating research in the last 30 years that has studied the intersection of emotions (ranging from anger to happiness) and leadership (ranging from managers to CEOs). Our synopsis of 101 articles provides insights into ongoing trends (such as frequent application of emotions as social information), relatively stable findings (such as role expectations surrounding emotional expressions for male and female leaders), as well as potential directions for future research (such as employing AI tools to study emotions). To wit, in this integrative review, we provide a consensus-creating contribution by bringing together a rich body of research on this topic, thereby expanding the frontier for future theory-building and theory-testing on leadership and emotions.

Department(s)

Business and Information Technology

Keywords and Phrases

Emotional processing; Emotional triggers; Emotions; Leader scripts; Leadership

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1048-9843

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2025 Elsevier, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Sep 2025

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