Vignette 1: Emotional Labor
Grandey (2003) – Surface & Deep Acting as Determinants of Emotional Exhaustion (EE)
Acting Approach: Surface & Deep Acting
- Good person-job fit may lessen the extent to which acting is needed but always there
- Both are internally false & involve effort, but they represent different intentions
- Deep Acting: actor attempts to modify feelings to match required display
o Intent: seem authentic
- Surface Acting: actor modifies display without shaping inner feelings
o Entails experiencing emotional dissonance
o Intent: to keep job, not to help customer or organization
- Shaping the need to act:
o Display rules: ideal standard that has been communicated & may be enforced through
supervision motivates action (might not be communicated, but ppl still aware)
o Job satisfaction: employees who feel positive at work should be less likely to act
- Emotional Exhaustion: state of depletion & fatigue that is considered the main component of
job burnout acting may create emotional exhaustion through:
1. The experience of tension from emotional dissonance
2. The draining of resources while effortfully acting
- Role performance (for service personnel):
o Affective delivery: extent to which service delivery is perceived as friendly & warm
o Breaking character: extent to which employees reveal negative moods or reactions
Method: 131 university administrative assistants filled out a survey
Findings:
- Awareness of display rules positively relates to deep acting (H1a) & surface acting
(H1bX)
- Job satisfaction is negatively related to deep acting (H2a) & surface acting (H2b)
- Deep acting (H3aX) & surface acting (H3b) is positively related to emotional exhaustion
- Deep acting is positively (H4a) & surface acting is negatively related to affective
delivery ratings (H4b)
- Deep acting is negatively (H5aX) & surface acting is positively related to ratings of breaking
character (H5bX)
- Acting mediates the relationship of job satisfaction and affective delivery. (H6)
- Emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship of acting with affective delivery and
breaking character (H7)
Discussion:
- Deep acting & emotional exhaustion rel. not significant when controlled for surface acting
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, #3 Attitudes and Emotion
Vignette 1: Emotional Labor
o Payoffs of deep acting may restore emotional resources that surface acting cannot
train deep acting & emotion regulation
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