Emotional regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor.

The topic of emotions in the workplace is beginning to garner closer attention by researchers and theorists. The study of emotional labor addresses the stress of managing emotions when the work role demands that certain expressions be shown to customers. However, there has been no overarching framework to guide this work, and the previous studies have often disagreed on the definition and operationalization of emotional labor. The purposes of this article are as follows: to review and compare previous perspectives of emotional labor, to provide a definition of emotional labor that integrates these perspectives, to discuss emotion regulation as a guiding theory for understanding the mechanisms of emotional labor, and to present a model of emotional labor that includes individual differences (such as emotional intelligence) and organizational factors (such as supervisor support). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal abuse from outsiders versus insiders: Comparing frequency, impact on emotional exhaustion, and the role of emotional labor.

Research on aggression from organizational outsiders (customers, clients or patients) has ignored insider-instigated aggression, and has been limited to employees in emotional labor jobs (e.g., social work and customer services). The authors argue that customer-employee interactions have distinct characteristics from organizational insider interactions, and provide two studies to compare the frequency and strain of verbal abuse from customers, supervisors and coworkers. Furthermore, they assess whether customer verbal abuse is only a critical issue for employees in jobs requiring emotional labor, measured with both O*NET job codes and self-reported display rules. With a national random sample of U.S. employees (n = 2446) and a convenience sample of U.S. employees who have customer contact (n = 121), the authors find that verbal abuse from outsiders (1) occurs more frequently than insider verbal abuse, particularly for those with higher emotional labor requirements, and (2) predicts emotional exhaustion over and above insider verbal abuse, regardless of emotional labor requirements. The authors conclude that better integration of customer aggression and insider aggression research is needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Must "Service With a Smile" Be Stressful? The Moderating Role of Personal Control for American and French Employees.

Suppressing and faking emotional expressions depletes personal resources and predicts job strain for customer-contact employees. The authors argue that personal control over behavior, in the job and within the national culture, provides compensatory resources that reduce this strain. With a survey study of 196 employees from the United States and France, the authors supported that high job autonomy buffered the relationship of emotion regulation with emotional exhaustion and, to a lesser extent, job dissatisfaction. The relationship of emotion regulation with job dissatisfaction also depended on the emotional culture; the relationship was weaker for French customer-contact employees who were proposed to have more personal control over expressions than U.S. employees. Theoretical and research implications for the emotion regulation literature and practical suggestions for minimizing job strain are proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing the negative effects of emotion work in service occupations: Emotional competence as a psychological resource.

Although emotion work and emotional competence focus on similar processes, there has been a lack of integration between the 2 concepts. Emotion work is the regulatory effort to express organizationally desired emotions, whereas emotional competence encompasses skills that focus on how people deal with and regulate their own affect and that of others. The general hypothesis of this study was that emotional competence can be regarded as an important personal resource in emotion work because it moderates the relationships between work characteristics, emotional dissonance, and outcome variables. Eighty-four service employees completed a questionnaire on their working conditions and their well-being. In addition, peer ratings for emotional competence were completed. The authors found that emotional competence moderated most of the proposed relationships between work characteristics and emotional dissonance, between emotional dissonance and outcome variables, and between work characteristics and outcome variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional display rules as work unit norms: A multilevel analysis of emotional labor among nurses.

Emotional labor theory has conceptualized emotional display rules as shared norms governing the expression of emotions at work. Using a sample of registered nurses working in different units of a hospital system, we provided the first empirical evidence that display rules can be represented as shared, unit-level beliefs. Additionally, controlling for the influence of dispositional affectivity, individual-level display rule perceptions, and emotion regulation, we found that unit-level display rules are associated with individual-level job satisfaction. We also showed that unit-level display rules relate to burnout indirectly through individual-level display rule perceptions and emotion regulation strategies. Finally, unit-level display rules also interacted with individual-level dispositional affectivity to predict employee use of emotion regulation strategies. We discuss how future research on emotional labor and display rules, particularly in the health care setting, can build on these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The primacy of perceiving: Emotion recognition buffers negative effects of emotional labor.

There is ample empirical evidence for negative effects of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) on workers' well-being. This study analyzed to what extent workers' ability to recognize others' emotions may buffer these effects. In a 4-week study with 85 nurses and police officers, emotion recognition moderated the relationship between emotional labor and work engagement: Workers with high emotion recognition engaging in emotional labor did not report lower work engagement after 4 weeks, whereas those with low emotion recognition did. These effects pertained to both surface and deep acting. The results suggest that emotional labor be not necessarily detrimental to workers' engagement. Instead, the impact of emotional labor hinges upon workers' ability to correctly identify interaction partners' emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acceptability and suppression of negative emotion in anxiety and mood disorders.

The present study investigated perceived acceptability and suppression of negative emotion in participants with anxiety and mood disorders. Sixty participants with these disorders and 30 control participants watched an emotion-provoking film and completed self-report measures of their experience and regulation of emotions. The film elicited similar increases in negative emotion for clinical and nonclinical participants; however, clinical participants judged their resulting emotions as less acceptable and suppressed their emotions to a greater extent. The higher level of suppression in the clinical group was attributable to females in the clinical group suppressing their emotions more than females in the nonclinical group. For all participants, high levels of suppression were associated with increased negative emotion during the film and during a postfilm recovery period. Further analyses showed that appraising emotions as unacceptable mediated the relationship between negative emotion intensity and use of suppression in the clinical group. This study extends the literature on emotion regulation to a clinical sample and suggests that judging emotions as unacceptable and suppressing emotions may be important aspects of the phenomenology of emotional disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the costs and benefits of emotional labor: A meta-analysis of three decades of research.

This article provides a quantitative review of the link of emotional labor (emotion–rule dissonance, surface acting, and deep acting) with well-being and performance outcomes. The meta-analysis is based on 494 individual correlations drawn from a final sample of 95 independent studies. Results revealed substantial relationships of emotion–rule dissonance and surface acting with indicators of impaired well-being (ρs between .39 and .48) and job attitudes (ρs between ?.24 and ?.40) and a small negative relationship with performance outcomes (ρs between ?.20 and ?.05). Overall, deep acting displayed weak relationships with indicators of impaired well-being and job attitudes but positive relationships with emotional performance and customer satisfaction (ρs .18 and .37). A meta-analytic regression analysis provides information on the unique contribution of emotion–rule dissonance, surface acting, and deep acting in statistically predicting well-being and performance outcomes. Furthermore, a mediation analysis confirms theoretical models of emotional labor which suggest that surface acting partially mediates the relationship of emotion–rule dissonance with well-being. Implications for future research as well as pragmatic ramifications for organizational practices are discussed in conclusion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model.

Research and valid practice in emotional intelligence (EI) have been impeded by lack of theoretical clarity regarding (a) the relative roles of emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation facets in explaining job performance; (b) conceptual redundancy of EI with cognitive intelligence and Big Five personality; and (c) application of the EI label to 2 distinct sets of constructs (i.e., ability-based EI and mixed-based EI). In the current article, the authors propose and then test a theoretical model that integrates these factors. They specify a progressive (cascading) pattern among ability-based EI facets, in which emotion perception must causally precede emotion understanding, which in turn precedes conscious emotion regulation and job performance. The sequential elements in this progressive model are believed to selectively reflect Conscientiousness, cognitive ability, and Neuroticism, respectively. “Mixed-based” measures of EI are expected to explain variance in job performance beyond cognitive ability and personality. The cascading model of EI is empirically confirmed via meta-analytic data, although relationships between ability-based EI and job performance are shown to be inconsistent (i.e., EI positively predicts performance for high emotional labor jobs and negatively predicts performance for low emotional labor jobs). Gender and race differences in EI are also meta-analyzed. Implications for linking the EI fad in personnel selection to established psychological theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Display Rule "Regulators": The Relationship Between Supervisors and Worker Emotional Exhaustion.

This field study examined the effect of supervisory regulation of display rules--the rules about what kind of emotion to express on the job (R. Ekman, 1992; A. Rafaeli & R. I. Sutton, 1987)--on the emotional exhaustion of subordinates. On the basis of a sample of 940 call center employees, the authors found that worker emotional exhaustion varied across supervisors within jobs, suggesting that emotion work is influenced at the supervisory, rather than job, level. Moreover, the authors found that the importance supervisors place on interpersonal job demands of their workers was positively related to worker emotional exhaustion. Worker career identity moderated the interpersonal-job-demands--emotional-exhaustion relationship, but self-efficacy did not. Study conclusions and suggestions for future research are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Workplace emotions: The role of supervision and leadership.

In this experience sampling study, the authors examined the role of organizational leaders in employees' emotional experiences. Data were collected from health care workers 4 times a day for 2 weeks. Results indicate supervisors were associated with employee emotions in 3 ways: (a) Employees experienced fewer positive emotions when interacting with their supervisors as compared with interactions with coworkers and customers; (b) employees with supervisors high on transformational leadership experienced more positive emotions throughout the workday, including interactions with coworkers and customers; and (c) employees who regulated their emotions experienced decreased job satisfaction and increased stress, but those with supervisors high on transformational leadership were less likely to experience decreased job satisfaction. The results also suggest that the effects of emotional regulation on stress are long lasting (up to 2 hr) and not easily reduced by leadership behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional self-disclosure and emotional avoidance: Relations with symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Research suggests that individuals with heightened symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders engage in diminished emotional disclosure. On the basis of emotion regulation theories, the authors hypothesized that this symptom–disclosure relationship would be mediated by the avoidance of emotional experience and expression. In Study 1, college students (N = 831) completed measures of depression and anxiety symptoms, measures of tendencies to avoid emotional expression, and measures of tendencies to self-disclose distress. Structural equation modeling revealed that anhedonic depression and anxious arousal were associated with lessened emotional self-disclosure tendencies as mediated by avoidance of emotional expression. In Study 2, participants (N = 153) completed new measures of depression and anxiety symptoms, reflected on the most significant emotional event experienced during the past week, and rated their avoidance of emotion about the event and their self-disclosure of the event. Depression (but not anxiety) symptoms were negatively related to the disclosure of a specific event, but avoidance of emotional experience did not mediate this depression–disclosure relationship. These findings extend emotion dysregulation theory and suggest that depressive symptoms in particular are associated with reduced emotional disclosure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Willing and able to fake emotions: A closer examination of the link between emotional dissonance and employee well-being.

Emotional dissonance resulting from an employee's emotional labor is usually considered to lead to negative employee outcomes, such as job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Drawing on Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, we argue that the relationship between service employees' surface acting and job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion is moderated by 2 aspects of a service worker's self-concept: the importance of displaying authentic emotions (reflecting the self-concept's self-liking dimension) and the employee's self-efficacy when faking emotions (reflecting the self-competence dimension). A survey of 528 frontline employees from a wide variety of service jobs provides support for the moderating role of both self-concept dimensions, which moderate 3 out of 4 relationships. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed from the perspectives of cognitive dissonance and emotional labor theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Look before you regulate: Differential perceptual strategies underlying expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.

Successful emotion regulation is important for maintaining psychological well-being. Although it is known that emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, may have divergent consequences for emotional responses, the cognitive processes underlying these differences remain unclear. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate the role of attentional deployment in emotion regulation success. We hypothesized that differences in the deployment of attention to emotional areas of complex visual scenes may be a contributing factor to the differential effects of these two strategies on emotional experience. Eye-movements, pupil size, and self-reported negative emotional experience were measured while healthy young adult participants viewed negative IAPS images and regulated their emotional responses using either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression. Consistent with prior work, reappraisers reported feeling significantly less negative than suppressers when regulating emotion as compared to a baseline condition. Across both groups, participants looked away from emotional areas during emotion regulation, an effect that was more pronounced for suppressers. Critically, irrespective of emotion regulation strategy, participants who looked toward emotional areas of a complex visual scene were more likely to experience emotion regulation success. Taken together, these results demonstrate that attentional deployment varies across emotion regulation strategies and that successful emotion regulation depends on the extent to which people look toward emotional content in complex visual scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation as a mediator of associations between mother–child attachment and peer relationships in middle childhood.

Although a link between attachment and peer relationships has been established, the mechanisms that account for this link have not been identified. The 1st goal of this study was to test emotion regulation as a mediator of this link in middle childhood. The 2nd goal was to examine how different aspects of emotion regulation relate to peer competence. Fifth graders completed self-report and semiprojective measures to index mother–child attachment, mothers reported on children's emotionality and coping strategies, and teachers reported on children's peer competence. Constructive coping was related to both attachment and peer competence, and mediated the association between attachment and peer competence, suggesting that emotion regulation is one of the mechanisms accounting for attachment-peer links. Constructive coping was more strongly associated with peer competence for children high on negative emotionality than for children low on negative emotionality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an established program shown to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. MBSR is believed to alter emotional responding by modifying cognitive–affective processes. Given that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by emotional and attentional biases as well as distorted negative self-beliefs, we examined MBSR-related changes in the brain–behavior indices of emotional reactivity and regulation of negative self-beliefs in patients with SAD. Sixteen patients underwent functional MRI while reacting to negative self-beliefs and while regulating negative emotions using 2 types of attention deployment emotion regulation—breath-focused attention and distraction-focused attention. Post-MBSR, 14 patients completed neuroimaging assessments. Compared with baseline, MBSR completers showed improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms and self-esteem. During the breath-focused attention task (but not the distraction-focused attention task), they also showed (a) decreased negative emotion experience, (b) reduced amygdala activity, and (c) increased activity in brain regions implicated in attentional deployment. MBSR training in patients with SAD may reduce emotional reactivity while enhancing emotion regulation. These changes might facilitate reduction in SAD-related avoidance behaviors, clinical symptoms, and automatic emotional reactivity to negative self-beliefs in adults with SAD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time course of processing emotional stimuli as a function of perceived emotional intelligence, anxiety, and depression.

An individual's self-reported abilities to attend to, understand, and reinterpret emotional situations or events have been associated with anxiety and depression, but it is unclear how these abilities affect the processing of emotional stimuli, especially in individuals with these symptoms. The present study recorded event-related brain potentials while individuals reporting features of anxiety and depression completed an emotion-word Stroop task. Results indicated that anxious apprehension, anxious arousal, and depression were associated with self-reported emotion abilities, consistent with prior literature. In addition, lower anxious apprehension and greater reported emotional clarity were related to slower processing of negative stimuli indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs). Higher anxious arousal and reported attention to emotion were associated with ERP evidence of early attention to all stimuli regardless of emotional content. Reduced later engagement with stimuli was also associated with anxious arousal and with clarity of emotions. Depression was not differentially associated with any emotion processing stage indexed by ERPs. Research in this area may lead to the development of therapies that focus on minimization of anxiety to foster successful emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory capacity and spontaneous emotion regulation: High capacity predicts self-enhancement in response to negative feedback.

Although previous evidence suggests that working memory capacity (WMC) is important for success at emotion regulation, that evidence may reveal simply that people with higher WMC follow instructions better than those with lower WMC. The present study tested the hypothesis that people with higher WMC more effectively engage in spontaneous emotion regulation following negative feedback, relative to those with lower WMC. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either no feedback or negative feedback about their emotional intelligence. They then completed a disguised measure of self-enhancement and a self-report measure of affect. Experimental condition and WMC interacted such that higher WMC predicted more self-enhancement and less negative affect following negative feedback. This research provides novel insight into the consequences of individual differences in WMC and illustrates that cognitive capacity may facilitate the spontaneous self-regulation of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship of emotional exhaustion to work attitudes, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors.

The authors investigated the negative consequences of emotional exhaustion for individual employees and their employers. On the basis of social exchange theory, the authors proposed that emotional exhaustion would predict job performance, 2 classes of organizational citizenship behavior, and turnover intentions. In addition, the authors posited that the relationship between emotional exhaustion and effective work behaviors would be mediated by organizational commitment. With only a few exceptions, the results of 2 field studies supported the authors' expectations. In addition, emotional exhaustion exerted an independent effect on these criterion variables beyond the impact of age, gender, and ethnicity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive Effects of Personality and Perceptions of the Work Situation on Workplace Deviance.

Previous research on workplace deviance has examined the relationship of either personality or employees' situational perceptions with deviant behavior. In this study, the authors focused on the joint relationship of personality and perceptions of the work situation with deviant behavior. Using 4 samples of employees and multiple operationalizations of the core constructs, the authors found support for the hypothesis that positive perceptions of the work situation are negatively related to workplace deviance. In addition, consistent with hypotheses, the personality traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness moderated this relationship. Specifically, the relationship between perceptions of the developmental environment and organizational deviance was stronger for employees low in conscientiousness or emotional stability, and the relationship between perceived organizational support and interpersonal deviance was stronger for employees low in agreeableness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)