Positive affect trajectories over the working days: Inter-individual differences and associations with employees' work engagement and fatigue

Previous work has examined the patterns of change in trait-positive affect across childhood and adolescence transitions, yet relatively little is known regarding temporal patterns of change in employees' state positive affect across working days. This article addressed this gap by adopting the latent class growth analysis to explore (a) whether distinct growth trajectories of daily positive affect emerged among Chinese employees and (b) how the positive affect trajectories differ from each other with regard to work engagement and fatigue at the start and end of the working week. Using an experience sampling design, 169 Chinese employees completed online questionnaires across five consecutive workdays, reporting their positive affect each morning and their work engagement and fatigue on Monday and Friday afternoons. A three-class solution yielded the following profiles: a moderate-stable positive affect trajectory and two trajectories with changing positive affect levels (high-increasing and low-decreasing positive affect trajectories). Furthermore, the trajectories exhibited class-specific differences in work engagement and fatigue on Monday and Friday afternoons. Our findings demonstrated that the temporal patterns of short-term change in daily positive affect across one working week matter for employees' work-related outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.