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February 2006

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U of M study finds that bosses tend to bring employees down
Feb. 21, 2006

Employees experience fewer positive emotions when interacting with their bosses as compared to interactions with their co-workers or customers, a study by University of Minnesota researchers has found. U of M psychology professor Joyce Bono along with psychology graduate students Hannah Jackson, Gregory Vinson and John Muros did the study. The study focused on health care workers who regulate their emotions during work. For example, the employee may have had to put on a smile and be cheerful when he or she is really feeling crabby. When employees hid negative emotions or faked positive emotions, they experienced increase stress and reduced job satisfaction. While employees experienced fewer positive emotions when interacting with their supervisors, there was some good news involving bosses, Bono said. Employees with supervisors who rated high on transformational leadership behaviors tended to experience more positive emotions in all interactions throughout the workday and employees with those types of supervisors also were less likely to experience decreased job satisfaction when regulating their emotions, Bono said. Bono is the principal investigator and founding director of The Leadership Lab, an organizational research laboratory at the U of M.

To learn more about this study and to interview Bono, contact Patty Mattern, University News Service, (612) 624-2801.

Engineering students designing solar lantern to bring light to remote Nicaragua
Feb. 21, 2006

Imagine wanting to read a book at night and not having electricity to power a light bulb. When University of Minnesota electrical engineering student Patrick Delaney visited people living in a remote mountainous region in Nicaragua, he found people frustrated by their lack of electricity to provide light for reading or cooking. They told him what they most want and need is light. “They’re living in the countryside way off of any electrical grid,” Delaney said. “There’s no electricity and it takes hours to get to a city where there’s resources.” When Delaney returned from his trip, he started working with four fellow electrical engineering students to find a way to get light to the people he left people. So now, as a senior design project, the students are designing a solar lantern that can then be manufactured in Nicaragua and purchased cost-effectively by the people there. The students are working on a prototype of the lantern and one of the designers will take the prototype with her to Venezuela in March to test it. Delaney calls their work a social based design project.

To interview Delaney and others involved in this story, contact Patty Mattern, University News Service, (612) 624-2801.