MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Measuring Emotions in the Digital Age

Facial recognition software represents a new and promising digital approach to emotion measurement in management. But leaders must proceed with care.

Let’s face it—emotions matter. Whether we’d like them to or not, emotions play a role in decision-making, performance, and overall well-being, and it’s impossible (and undesirable) to stop people from experiencing them — even in environments where we’d often rather they didn’t, like the workplace. Given the omnipresence and impact of emotions in our lives, they have become a popular topic among researchers in business and management.

Traditionally, many studies have focused on negative emotions in the workplace, given their ability to disrupt. Research has proved that emotions such as anger can be linked to higher levels of incivility among colleagues and that some negative emotions can be contagious.

When it comes to addressing employees’ emotions at work, strategizing the best response is often more difficult than one expects.