Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Culture doesn’t just shape behavior; it shapes the emotional states people value. Those values operate largely below the surface and can drive some of the most consequential decisions organizations make—who gets hired, who gets promoted, who looks like a leader, and increasingly, how we design AI.
For 30 years, psychologist Jeanne Tsai, the Dunlevie Family Professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab, has been building the science of how culture shapes emotion and its implications for decision-making, health, and how people are perceived. She joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss why it’s important for leaders to understand and examine this unwritten standard for how employees feel at work.
3 Main Takeaways:
1. Name and examine your organization’s emotional ideal—and as a leader, think about how that might be at odds with your employee’s own personal emotional ideal.
2. Consider the possibility that your evaluation of a job candidate or employee might be a reflection of your emotional ideal rather than just a reflection of their merit or performance.
3. Understand that emotional misreads are often cultural misreads, and leaders should not view those differences as character judgments.
Show Links:
• Jeanne Tsai | Stanford University (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/people/jeanne-l-tsai)
• Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/)
• Americans are obsessed with Alyssa Liu. Here’s a big reason why. (drive.google.com/file/d/1BXdsL2F_YgMscik4cvd7qdpLAP2R4dZD/view?usp=sharing) (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Leader choices reflect cultural differences in ideal affect more during organizational growth than decline (psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2027-37972-001.html) (Emotion)
• Should job applicants be excited or calm? The role of culture and ideal affect in employment settings (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/sites/culture_emotion_lab/files/media/file/shouldjobapplicants2018_1.pdf) (Emotion)
• Cultural variation in the smiles we trust: The effects of reputation and ideal affect on resource sharing (psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-59972-001.html) (Emotion)
• How culture shapes what people want from AI (dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642660) (Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
Read the full transcript on The Culture Kit website (https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/posts/jeanne-tsai-on-the-invisible-standard-thats-governing-your-organization-emotions/) .
*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at haas.org/culture-kit (haas.org/culture-kit).
Culture doesn’t just shape behavior; it shapes the emotional states people value. Those values operate largely below the surface and can drive some of the most consequential decisions organizations make—who gets hired, who gets promoted, who looks like a leader, and increasingly, how we design AI.
For 30 years, psychologist Jeanne Tsai, the Dunlevie Family Professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab, has been building the science of how culture shapes emotion and its implications for decision-making, health, and how people are perceived. She joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss why it’s important for leaders to understand and examine this unwritten standard for how employees feel at work.
3 Main Takeaways:
1. Name and examine your organization’s emotional ideal—and as a leader, think about how that might be at odds with your employee’s own personal emotional ideal.
2. Consider the possibility that your evaluation of a job candidate or employee might be a reflection of your emotional ideal rather than just a reflection of their merit or performance.
3. Understand that emotional misreads are often cultural misreads, and leaders should not view those differences as character judgments.
Show Links:
• Jeanne Tsai | Stanford University (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/people/jeanne-l-tsai)
• Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/)
• Americans are obsessed with Alyssa Liu. Here’s a big reason why. (drive.google.com/file/d/1BXdsL2F_YgMscik4cvd7qdpLAP2R4dZD/view?usp=sharing) (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Leader choices reflect cultural differences in ideal affect more during organizational growth than decline (psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2027-37972-001.html) (Emotion)
• Should job applicants be excited or calm? The role of culture and ideal affect in employment settings (https://culture-emotion-lab.stanford.edu/sites/culture_emotion_lab/files/media/file/shouldjobapplicants2018_1.pdf) (Emotion)
• Cultural variation in the smiles we trust: The effects of reputation and ideal affect on resource sharing (psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-59972-001.html) (Emotion)
• How culture shapes what people want from AI (dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642660) (Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
Read the full transcript on The Culture Kit website (https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/posts/jeanne-tsai-on-the-invisible-standard-thats-governing-your-organization-emotions/) .
*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at haas.org/culture-kit (haas.org/culture-kit).
