As Seen on Social Media: The Daily Effects of Social Media Content on Employee Emotions and Behaviors

ABSTRACT Employees regularly use social media during work hours and thus are exposed to a wide variety of vibrant, fluid social information that they would likely not have access to through other channels. We contribute to the literature by suggesting that the social information available on social media is infused with meaning that can affect employees' social motivation and subsequent workplace behaviors. We specifically examine employees' perceptions of social media content (i.e., their interpretations of the substance of social media posts) by first creating a multi‐dimensional measure that includes attractive, family, contentious, and accomplished social media content. We then rely on the theory of approach and avoidance social motivation to propose that social media posts that are perceived as having attractive, family, and accomplished content activate employees' emotional states of self‐assurance (as an approach emotion), which then fosters the approach behavior of work‐goal progress. We also predict that perceptions of contentious and accomplished content trigger employees' anxiety (as an avoidance emotion), which then prompts social withdrawal as an avoidance behavior. Additionally, we explore the moderating role of trait competitiveness in relation to the dual effects of perceptions of accomplished social media content on both approach and avoidance social motivation. We developed our measure using a multi‐grounded theory approach, and we employed two 10‐day, multi‐wave experience sampling method (ESM) studies to test our hypotheses, for which we found general support.