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Summary Theme 3 of Attidues and Emotions in Organizations (FSWP40021AO)
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Theme 31. What is emotional labor?
2. What are antecedents of emotional labor?
3. How are individual differences (and especially personality traits) related to
emotional labor?
4. What are the consequences of emotional labor?
Vignette 1&2: Emotional labor
Grandey, A.A. (2003). When ‘the show must go on’: Surface acting and deep acting as
determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. Academy of Management
Journal, 46(1), 86-9
Abstract: Affective delivery, or showing positive emotions in interactions, helps satisfy customers.
But employees cannot always feel positive, this is why they engage in surface acting (adjusting facial
expressions) or deep acting (adjusting internal feelings). These two variables were tested as
predictors of stress and coworker-related-affective delivery. Consistent with dramaturgical
perspective, effective delivery evaluations were negatively related to surface acting but positively
related to deep acting. Surface acting was related to stress, deep acting wasn’t.
Research shows that positive affective displays in customer interaction, like smiling and friendliness,
is positively associated with important outcomes > returning to a store, recommending it to others.
One cannot always feel positive and thus takes part in acting.
Dramaturgical approach to service delivery suggests that acting can take on two forms: (1)
surface acting (adjusting facial expressions/faking affective displays) and (2) deep acting
(adjusting inner feelings to match you expression)
This study compares deep/surface acting as determinants of job burnout and quality of
affective delivery to customers. Deep acting is supposed to result in higher ratings than
faking (surface acting), that probably has a negative impact on the affective delivery.
The dramaturgical perspective and proposed model
Deep and surface acting are two dramaturgical approaches that adjust emotions. In both cases one
has learned to intervene: by creating the form of a feeling by forming and outward expression.
- When someone takes part in deep acting, he/she tries to adjust their feelings to match the
required emotions. The intention here is to appear authentic to customers > faking in good
faith.
- An individual does not take part in deep acting as much when they do not know how to
regulate their emotions
Surface acting: people adjust their display, but not their inner feelings. For this one has to
experience emotional dissonance > faking in bad faith. The employee conforms to display rules to
keep job, but not to help customer or organization.
A lot of different aspects of the situation and employee can influence the need to act, but mainly:
display rules and job satisfaction.
, 1. Display rules: which emotion is expected in a job (neutral, angry, positive). When someone
is aware of this, this influences their acting.
a) Hypothesis 1a: awareness of display rules is positively associated to deep acting
b) Hypothesis 1b: awareness of display rules is positively related to surface acting > not
related
2. Job satisfaction: employees who feel positive at work will be less likely to act, because their
natural feelings are in line with the expressions it requires, so:
a) Hypothesis 2a: job satisfaction is negatively related to deep acting
b) Hypothesis 2b: job satisfaction is negatively related to surface acting > relationship is
mainly strong for surface acting.
There are also a few outcomes of acting:
3. Emotional exhaustion: a state of exhaustion and depletion, it is the main component of job
burnout. Acting at the job can cause emotional exhaustion due to 2 reasons: (1)
experiencing tension by emotional dissonance and (2) lowering resources by strenuous
acting.
a. Hypothesis 3a: deep acting is positively related to emotional exhaustion > not related
b. Hypothesis 3b: surface acting is positively related to emotional exhaustion
4. Role performance: affective delivery and breaking character
a) Affective delivery: refers to the degree to which a service is seen as friendly/warm. A key
factor of good affective delivery is the observed authenticity. Evidence suggests that people
recognize an authentic/real smile and respond less positively to a non-authentic smile.
- Hypothesis 4a: deep acting is positively related to evaluations of affective delivery
- Hypothesis 4b: surface acting is negatively related to evaluations of affective delivery >
because non-authentic/real
b) Breaking character (falling out of your role): refers to degree to which employees show
negative mood/response to customers, which can destroy the customer – organization
relationship. Surface acting is an attempt to avoid breaking character, by putting on a smile.
Hypothesis 5a: deep acting is negatively related to evaluations of breaking character > not
confirmed
Hypothesis 5b: surface acting is positively related to evaluations of breaking character > would
break more quickly > not confirmed
5. Job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion as predictors of service performance: a
mediating path through acting is proposed: job satisfaction has an effect on affective
delivery because satisfaction lowers the amount of acting
a) Hypothesis 6: acting mediates the relationship between job satisfaction and affective
delivery
b) At the same time high levels of emotional exhaustion possibly have a direct influence
on evaluations of affective delivery and breaking character. An emotionally exhausted
person is seen as less warm.
c) Hypothesis 7: emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between acting and
affective delivery between acting and breaking character
, Results
Hypothesis 1a was confirmed: display rules were significantly related to deep acting. But,
not to surface acting (hypothesis 1b not supported)
Hypothesis 2a and 2b were confirmed: job satisfaction was negatively related to deep
acting, and even more strongly negatively related to surface acting, like expected.
Hypothesis 3b was confirmed: emotional exhaustion was positively related to surface
acting. But, not to deep acting (hypothesis 3a not supported)
Hypothesis 4a and 4b were confirmed: deep acting was positively related to evaluations of
affective delivery, and surface acting was negatively related to evaluations of affective
delivery
Hypothesis 5a and 5b were not confirmed: surface and deep acting didn’t have significant
relations with breaking character
Hypothesis 6 was confirmed: job satisfaction-affective delivery relation was fully mediated
by acting
Hypothesis 7 was confirmed: relation between surface acting and affective delivery was
mediated by emotional exhaustion (surface acting has direct effect on affective delivery
evaluations). Deep acting was not significantly related to emotional exhaustion and cannot
be mediated by emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion also mediated the relationship
between acting and affective delivery. Regarding breaking character they didn’t say much
because earlier hypothesis were already not confirmed.
Discussion
Two aspects of someone’s job are associated with high acting-levels: job satisfaction and display
rules. There is more acting when employees are not satisfied with their job, and especially surface
acting increases in this case. The relation between job satisfaction and affective delivery was fully
, mediated by acting: liking your job influences how you act (deep/surface) and this influences the
affective delivery towards customers. A happy worker is less likely to display and act
Employees who ‘perceive’ display rules showed higher levels of deep acting, but not surface acting.
This supported the idea that deep acting is a response to demands of the job. Surface acting most
likely arises as a reaction to certain job-events instead of general rules.
Deep acting (or working on inner feelings to appear authentic to customers) had, like predicted, a
positive influence on the affective delivery (interactions with customers). Deep acting also has the
power to convince the audience. In this strenuous process stressful for employees?> relationship
between deep acting and emotional exhaustion was not significant. It seems that the positive
outcomes of deep acting (lower emotional dissonance and positive response of customers) this
could arise, because it can build emotional resources.
Surface acting was negatively related to affective delivery > the more surface acting an employee
reported, the lower the evaluated affective delivery. One sees them more quickly as breaking
character, which is because of the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion
was experienced more quickly when employees engage in surface acting more often, how one has
little remaining resources and engages in breaking character.
Grandey, A. A., Melloy, R.C. (2017). The state of the heart: Emotional labor as emotion regulation
reviewed and revised. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 407-422.
Emotional labor: when emotional expressions are as explicit part of the job role. Effort put into
emotional labor is not only exhausting but can result in deeper damage to employees. The focus in
this article is on how the conceptual integration of emotion regulation (ER) and emotional labor (EL)
have served our knowledge and how the theoretical and empirical developments can contribute to
the work of the future.
Model contributions (model by Grandey, 2000)
Development of the EL concept
Hochschild defined EL as a job in which (a) someone has a lot of interactions with the public, (b)
employees have to manage their own and emotions of others, and (c) emotions were monitored
and enforced by management. They identified two strategies with which employees could meet
these emotional requirements – surface acting (where employees mask their own feelings and meet
the expected expression – emotive dissonance) and deep acting (where employees change feelings
to come across as more genuine in the performance, but possible lose their real feelings in the
process). She mainly saw these strategies as negative. A little later one stated something different:
emotions can be good for companies, instead of irrational and problematic. Finally all approaches
agree that ER strategies (surface and deep acting) are used at the job.
Emotion labor as Emotion regulation (ER)
The primary idea behind EL as emotion regulation (ER) was the EL can be best defined as the effort
that an employee puts forth instead of the job requirements or expressive display, and that two
techniques of Hochschild could be mapped onto two types of ER strategies. Gross defined ER as the
process with which individuals influence what emotions they have, and if they have them, how they
experience/express these emotions.
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