Technology, that is, the output of human innovation, has always been central to human progress worldwide. Early on, the ancients developed the wheel, concrete, calculus, and paper, which led to advances in transportation, construction, and communication. Today, the incarnation of technology falls in the realm of the digital and computational, and its progress has been rapid, even arguably exponential. In his chapter, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” Ray Kurzweil writes, “An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)” (Kurzweil, 2004, p. 381).

Even decades after the affective revolution (Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017), affect remains an integral part of organizational psychology. The two primary perspectives in affective research center on affect as a dispositional construct (i.e. a trait) or a momentary construct (i.e. a state) (Brief & Weiss, 2002). Dispositional perspectives of affect refer to a general tendency to experience certain types and levels of affective state. This can reflect personality traits and affective dispositions (Watson & Clark, 1984; Watson & Tellegen, 2002). Momentary affect refers to emotions experienced in the moment, including both the valence of feelings (i.e. positive, negative) and discrete emotions (e.g. guilt, awe). Integrating person, situation, and emotional construal perspectives, this chapter seeks to incorporate decades of work on affective dispositions, momentary affect, and personality to present a conceptual model that specifies how these come together to produce in-the-moment emotions embedded in specific situations. In doing so, we provide theoretical specificity connecting these dispositional and momentary perspectives, answering the call for more multi-level and systems-based theories: for example, how does personality unfold to impact state-level emotions (Ilies, Schwind, & Heller, 2007)?