The Role of Motivational Systems and Emotions in a Virtual Task

The behavioural activation system (BAS) is considered to be an appetitive motivational system that typically induces 'approach' behaviours in response to positive stimuli, while the behavioural inhibition system (BIS) is considered to be an aversive system that induces behaviour to avoid or minimize the influence of negative stimuli. Given the increasingly important organizational form of virtual work, this exploratory study examined the role of BAS/BIS on state emotions and performance in a virtual task. BIS was found to have significant positive relationships with anger, anxiety, annoyance, nervousness, and distress. There were indications of emotional contagion between research confederates and participants.. State emotions did not have a significant direct relationship with performance. In contrast, self-report programming knowledge and the skill role of the research confederate both had significant relationships with performance. Self-report skill knowledge was fully mediated by the skill role played by the research confederate.