Positive “can do” attitudes can be immensely helpful, whether on a team, at an organizational level, or even when starting a new project. But an over-reliance on staying positive may mean managers are missing out on the benefits of “negative” feelings.

For example, while sadness might be viewed as harmful for team morale, new research suggests there might be some benefit in harnessing that emotion in the workplace. It turns out, feeling sad may actually make you nicer.

“Sadness is a response to feeling harmed, so it makes people more attuned to the harm that their actions cause,” says Laura Noval, an associate professor of management and organization at Rennes School of Business in France and visiting professor at Imperial College Business School in London, U.K.

In a working paper co-authored with Rotman professor Chen-Bo Zhong and Vienna University of Economics and Business professor Günter K. Stahl, Noval conducted three studies to look at how different emotions impact ethical decision making. The researchers found that sadness decreases a person’s likelihood to harm someone else or do something morally questionable ­— even when the rewards are high.

Over three studies, participants were sorted into one of three groups (happy, sad, control) and were provided stories or music to evoke the desired emotion.

One study, which invited participants to lie in exchange for a reward, found those in the “sad” group were far more likely to choose not to lie (18 per cent) compared to those who felt neutral (zero per cent chose not to lie) or happy (six per cent chose not to lie).

A second study asked participants to over-report their billable hours or lie to a customer to make a sale. Much like the first study, participants conditioned to feel sad were significantly less likely to be dishonest than the control and happiness groups.

In the final study, the researchers led a version of the dictator game, in which a participant (the proverbial dictator) is told that if another person wins the lottery, the dictator can claim 20, 40, 60 or 80 per cent of the other’s winnings. Over the course of the game, sad participants claimed significantly less money than the control participants.

The researchers posit that people who are feeling sad are more likely to weigh every outcome, including the negative ones, when making decisions. As a result, they’re more likely to walk away from a decision (such as lying) if they believe the risks are too great or they believe their actions may harm another person; they are more likely to put up guardrails to prevent issues down the road; and they may be willing to raise potential problems with a choice that others might not have spotted. In comparison, when people are happy or optimistic, they are more likely to take risks that could have negative consequences.

“Companies or people with an optimism bias think each project will be shorter, cost less and that the risks are not as bad as they actually are,” says Noval. “If you look at all of the disasters or big corporate scandals, each tends to come from an optimism bias.”

Noval encourages managers to see their employees’ emotions as tools in their toolboxes. Every team needs a mix of feeling to make a project run successfully, she says. For example, anger can make you more assertive or better at setting boundaries, happiness can make you more likely to take risks and sadness can make you think through all of the ramifications — each is helpful when working on a project as a group. “Most of us experience all of these emotions; we don’t just have one,” says Noval. “We often try to only have positive emotions and get rid of the negative; instead, we should use them to our advantage.”

Managers should be trained on how to recognize their employees’ naturally occurring emotions, create a space to process those emotions, and ultimately, harness them appropriately.

(And rather than trying to induce certain feeling in your team, like the researchers did, there are often natural flows to people’s emotions, Noval says. In the winter months for example, people tend to be a bit sadder, which might make it a good time to encourage team members to consider the negative ramifications of a project’s decisions and timelines.)

Next, Noval wants to dive deeper into what people believe about emotions and how that affects their own decision making, she says. “The next step is to look at the little differences in the way that people see emotions, whether they see each emotion as manageable and useful, and how does that affect the way they make decisions.”