Mechanisms linking emotional labour and emotional exhaustion: Combining two different perspectives

Abstract

Although many studies have been conducted on emotional labour, the empirical evidence regarding the effect of deep acting on employees' emotional exhaustion remains mixed. Scholars adopting the person‐focused approach have supposed that deep acting is beneficial for employees' well‐being because it reduces the discrepancy between felt and expressed emotions—emotional dissonance. However, the mixed results of previous empirical studies indicate that a more balanced approach including an alternative mechanism that offsets the effect of emotional dissonance seems to be required. Drawing upon the job‐focused perspective, which stresses the psychological costs of emotional labour, we posited difficulty maintaining display rules as an alternative mechanism representing the ego‐depleting process of emotional labour. We tested the mediating effects of emotional dissonance and difficulty maintaining display rules on the relationship between emotional labour and emotional exhaustion. Our research model was tested using data collected from 211 salespeople over a 4‐week period. Using multilevel path analysis, we find that emotional dissonance and difficulty maintaining display rules mediate the effects of surface acting on emotional exhaustion. Difficulty maintaining display rules mediates the relationship between deep acting and emotional exhaustion. Our findings suggest that emotional labour strategies impact employees' emotional exhaustion via different mechanisms.