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Abstract
The literature on daily experiences of love has assumed that love is always beneficial given its positive health- and relationship-related consequences. However, such positive assumption needs to be revisited in the work context where employees are assessed not only on their successes regarding their interpersonal abilities, but also on their completion and achievement of work tasks and responsibilities. Drawing from broaden and build theory, I explore how coworkers can stimulate moments of felt love, as well as the daily positive and negative consequences of felt love at work. Specifically, I propose that coworkers’ affectionate expressions stimulate daily surges of felt love for employees, and such felt love broadens employees’ cognitions by prompting exploration and savoring processes, which may have divergent implications for employee performance. Regarding the exploration process, I suggest that felt love will trigger perspective taking, prompting employees to engage in organizational citizenship behavior towards their coworkers. Regarding the savoring process, I suggest that felt love will engender emotional residue, interfering with their task performance. In addition, I also theorize how employees’ other- and self-focused dispositions may influence the extent to which the exploration and savoring processes are enacted. Results from an experience sampling field study demonstrate that coworkers’ verbal, nonverbal, and supportive affectionate expressions can trigger felt love for employees. Additionally, I find that on days when employees feel higher than normal amounts of love, they are more likely to take others’ perspectives, prompting them to engage in OCBI, but they are also more likely to experience emotional residue, lowering their task performance. Theoretical and empirical implications are outlined and discussed.