Do You Feel Like Being Proactive Today? Trait-Proactivity Moderates Affective Causes and Consequences of Proactive Behavior

Proactive people take initiative when others do not and persist in improving their environment or themselves. Although scholars assume that how we feel influences how proactive we are, there is no experimental research yet to support this. This experiment therefore tests whether positive and negative affect influence proactive behavior and additionally investigates whether engaging in proactivity also has affective consequences. While current theory proposes that positive affect enhances proactive behavior by stimulating broad-flexible thinking, we argue that negative affect should make people proactive through stimulating systematic-persistent thinking. Furthermore, we propose that proactive behavior increases subsequent positive affect rather than positive affect increasing proactive behavior. Last, we hypothesize that affective causes and consequences of proactive behavior are different for people who are rarely proactive (trait-passive-reactive individuals) and people who are often proactive (trait-proactive individuals). We pre-tested 180 participants on trait-proactivity. In the lab, we manipulated affect (negative/positive/neutral), measured proactive behavior in a team interaction task, and repeatedly measured participants’ affective experiences and physiological activation. Results showed that the link between affect and proactive behavior differed depending on participants’ trait-proactivity. First, positive affect made trait-proactive individuals less proactive, whereas negative affect made passive-reactive individuals more proactive. Second, passive-reactive individuals reported decreased negative affect after engaging in proactivity, whereas proactive individuals reported increased positive affect. These results suggest that proactive behavior can serve an affect regulation purpose, which is different for trait proactive individuals (up regulating positive affect) than for trait passive-reactive individuals (down regulating negative affect). These results are limited to core affect (feeling pleasant or unpleasant) and do not apply to specific emotions (feeling proud or anxious), and they are limited to short term and successful proactive behavior and do not apply to more long term, or unsuccessful proactive behavior.