Serving with masks: a comparative analysis of flight attendants’ emotional labor between normal and COVID-19 times

Cabin crew members engage in more emotional labour due to their job demands and physical and mental labour, including a demanding work pace, irregular working hours, and extensive interaction with passengers from different cultural backgrounds or dealing with aggressive passengers. This study aims to explore the relationship between emotional labour and organisational cynicism by focusing on the mediating effect of person-job fit. The research data were collected through a survey administered to 561 cabin crew members employed in a ­medium-sized airline registered in Türkiye. The results indicate that person-job fit has a partial mediating effect on the effect of all sub-dimensions of emotional labour, namely surface acting, deep acting, and naturally felt emotions on the sub-dimensions of organisational cynicism (except for a full mediating effect of naturally felt emotions on behavioural cynicism). Other findings obtained from the analyses are discussed in detail in the study. The study concludes that person-job fit is vital for cabin crew members. Therefore, the study suggests that the airlines should concentrate on recruitment processes and practices to increase cabin crew members’ person-job fit.

Customer service-based employees act as an interface between the consumer and the organisation using managed emotional display which is known as emotional labour. While much research into emotional labour has been conducted over the last three decades, disagreement persists regarding the consequences of emotional labour on employee well-being, ranging from job satisfaction to job burnout. Conflicting empirical findings suggests there is much to be understood regarding the impact of emotional labour on employee well-being, particularly the differential impact of the two types of acting associated with emotional labour: surface acting (faking emotional display) and deep acting (trying to manufacture ‘authentic’ emotional display) and the function of emotional dissonance (stressor). This research examines the employee processes and mechanisms used by University Student Services staff to manage the experience of emotional dissonance during the process of performing emotional labour (specifically, surface acting). This research presents and tests a theoretically derived model of emotional labour that integrates components of coping and cognitive dissonance theories that assists in explaining how employees may manage the affective consequences of emotional labour. Adopting a mixed methods approach, this research includes three sequential phases. The first stage is a qualitative evaluation of the constructs within the theoretical model within the applied setting of Higher Education Student Services. The second stage involves two phases of data collection to develop and test emotional labour focused measures of behavioural disengagement and effort justification (cognitive dissonance theory), as well as a measure of emotional dissonance. The third and final stage tests the proposed model within the applied setting using the scales developed in stage two of the research. Study 1- A qualitative evaluation of the theoretical model using semi-structured interviews on a sample of Student Services employees (n=18). This study is also used to inform item selection and development for Study 2. Study 2- Stage 1: An assessment of the theoretically derived measurement models for emotional dissonance, behavioural disengagement, and effort justification using SEM techniques on a sample of customer service-based employees (n= 355). Stage 2: A confirmation of the measurement models on a sample of customer service-based employees (n= 154). Study 3- A test of the theoretical model using SEM and regression-based techniques using a sample of Student Services employees (n= 175). The scales developed in Study 2 are used in this phase of the research. The results supported the proposed mediating relationship of emotional dissonance between surface acting and job burnout suggesting that the negative affective state is central to determining the nature of job outcomes associated with emotional labour. The findings also indicated that employees who engage in the cognitive reappraisal mechanisms of behavioural disengagement and effort justification are able to manage the level of emotional dissonance they experience when surface acting. This finding illustrates the salience of individual differences in managing the consequences of emotional labour and contributes to clarifying the complex relationship between emotional labour and burnout. Finally, preventive coping was the only individual coping style found to predict the choice of emotional labour based acting (deep acting). This research demonstrates the importance of understanding intrapersonal processes in determining individual responses to emotional labour-based role demands and, in part, helps to clarify the nature and management of emotional dissonance, its measurement and its impact on employee burnout.

There is increasing research interest in both types of emotional labor at work (i.e. surface acting and deep acting), but the effects of emotional labor at work on employees’ emotional labor at home and their family members’ family quality have not yet been explored. Drawing on work-family enrichment theory, this study investigated the mechanism underlying the relationship between employees’ emotional labor at work and their spouses’ perceived family quality by focusing on the mediating role of employees’ emotional labor at home and the moderating role of work-to-family positive spillover (WFPS). The results from a time-lagged three-wave survey of 193 Chinese employee-spouse dyads indicated that surface acting at home mediated the relationship between surface acting at work and spousal ratings of family quality. Although deep acting at work was positively related to deep acting at home, deep acting at home was not significantly related to family quality. WFPS strengthened the relationship between surface acting at work and surface acting at home. This study extends emotional labor theories to the family domain and provides insights into the mediating mechanisms and boundary condition through which emotional labor at work relates to spouses’ perceptions of family quality. The implications for theory and management practice are discussed.

PurposeThe purpose of the present study was to examine whether and how the perceived organizational support (POS) influences emotional labor and the relationship between emotional labor and flight attendants' outcomes.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling analysis provided support for the hypotheses from a sample of 256 flight attendants in South Korea.FindingsThe results showed that POS has a positive effect on deep acting. Furthermore, it was found that surface acting has a positive influence on emotional exhaustion, whereas deep acting has a negative influence on emotional exhaustion. In addition, emotional exhaustion has a negative influence on organizational commitment, while organizational commitment has a negative influence on turnover intention. Furthermore, POS moderated the relationship between deep acting or surface acting and emotional exhaustion.Originality/valueThe current study broadened the conceptual work and laboratory studies in emotional labor by examining the role of POS on emotional regulation strategies related to emotional exhaustion. In addition, this study sheds new light on customer service management within the airline industry by examining flight attendants' emotional labor, particularly interactions with POS.

The aim of this study is to find out the possible effects of demographic characteristics of cabin crew on their emotional labor experiences. Emotional labor concept has been identified by Hochschild’s notorious research on Delta Airline’s cabin attendants and was published in her book “The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling” as the first time in the year 1983. In this study, 36 years after Hochschild’s work, the effects of demographic characteristics on the emotional labor experiences of 265 flight attendants who are working for airline companies in Turkey are investigated. In the literature, there are only a few studies on the effects of demographic factors on emotional labor experiences of cabin crew. So, this study provides an important insight into the subject. The emotional labor scale consists of three dimensions; deep acting, surface acting and genuine emotions. For the emotional labor, a total of 13 questions were answered by participants in 5-point Likert type scale through the Internet. Also, six questions related to demographic characteristics were answered. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed to verify the item distribution on each factor (i.e. deep acting, surface acting and genuine emotions). And, to analyze the differences between the emotional labor experiences of the groups according to age, gender, position, marital status, total working experience and education, independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA tests were applied. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare the differences of two groups such as married-single, male-female, flight attendant-flight attendant supervisor. One way ANOVA tests were used to compare the differences of three or more groups according to age, total working experience and education. Tukey HSD tests were performed after one way ANOVA tests to distinguish the statistically different groups. The results show that there are no statistically significant differences between the expressions of emotional labor, deep acting, surface acting and genuine emotions of groups according to gender, marital status, education and age. Yet, there are statistically significant differences between the emotional labor and surface acting experiences of flight attendants and flight attendant supervisors. Also, a statistically significant difference is found between the deep acting experiences of the cabin crew with 4–7 years of experience and those with 8–22 years of experience.

In the service industries, many service organizations have explicit or implicit emotional display rules – that is, showing the appropriate emotions and behaviors when front-line workers interact with customers face to face(Groth,Hennig-Thurau, and Walsh, 2009; Hochschild, 1983; RafaeliandSutton, 1987). Although workers acknowledge that they are required to complywith the organizational display rules, but their feelings inside are not alwaysconsistent with the roles they are playing. Even when they have the same job requirements, some handle the job easily, some are not, this shows the differences between individuals. The effects of personal factors or characteristics, such as gender, positivity or negativity, emotional expression, the Big Five, self-monitoring, andemotional intelligence, etc. on emotional laborhave been widely explored by previous researchers (BrotheridgeandGrandey,2002; Grandey, 2000;Kiffin-Petersen, Jordan, and Soutar, 2011;Schaubroeckand Jones, 2000; Callahan and McCollum, 2002;Wharton, 1993). However, the present studyfound that affective professional commitment as the antecedent of emotional labor remains untested.Toexpand the current literature on emotional labor, this studyintends toexaminethe extent to which doctors’affective professional commitment influence the emotional labor strategies (i.e., surface acting and deep acting) thatdoctors adopt. Moreover,apart fromexamining the possible effect ofemotional labor (i.e.,surface acting and deep acting) on emotion exhaustion, this study also attempts to investigate the unexplored relationship between emotional labor and customer orientation bytargeting patients as study subjects to fill out thequestionnaire ofcustomer orientation. This study chooses the doctors of clinic and rehabilitation center in Taipei and Tainan, mainly because this profession fits the features of emotional labor workers mentioned in Hochschild’s study (1982, 1983). The results of this study has shown that affective professional commitment did not have effects on surface acting, but had significant effects on deep acting. The effects of emotional labor on emotional exhaustion were significant, but the effects on customer orientation were not significant.

This study investigates the hypotheses that Asian flight attendants’ emotional labour aspects moderate the decreasing propensity of organizational trust and satisfaction in circumstances where the Psychological Contract Violation (PCV) is perceived. A questionnaire survey was administrated to 413 Asian flight attendants. A 5-point Liker-type scale was employed to assess the aspects of PCV and emotional labour. Approximately 500 questionnaires were randomly distributed to flight attendants at an Asian airport, confidentiality of the data was explained, and then they were asked to complete the questionnaire. The research findings, mean, S.D., Cronbach’s alpha and correlations for variables used in this study are shown. Then, multiple hierarchical regression is used to test the hypotheses. The results show that some emotional aspects (emotional delivery and surface acting) significantly recover the decreasing propensity of organizational trust and satisfaction in the stressful circumstances where emotional labour perceives PCV.

The objective of this study was to identify the effects of emotional intelligence and emotional labor on the burnout among psychological nurses. The subjects of this study were the psychological nurses working at 5 mental hospitals in C & D city. The self-reported questionnaires were administered to 200 psychological nurses and data were analyzed with SPSS 19.0. Results were followed: First, burnout the subjects showed significant differences according to age and job satisfaction. Second, there was a negative correlation between burnout and emotional intelligence, there was positive correlation between burnout and emotional labor. Third, significant explanatory variables of burnout were emotional intelligence, emotional labor, job satisfaction, and experience of move unit. Explanatory power of burnout was 36.5% on psychological nurses. The findings suggested that the intervention program of burnout should be developed in order to improve psychological support, manage emotional intelligence and reduce emotional labor among psychological nurses.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to figure out emotional labor, healthy lifestyle, needs for health services of flight attendants and the relationships among needs for health services according to various characteristics of flight attendants. Methods: The participants of this study were 140 flight attendants who work on major and low cost airlines. Data were collected through a questionnaire from 2017 .Jan.~2017. Feb. Data were subsequently analyzed using the SPSS 21 Program. Results: The score of emotional labor was 3.76 surface acting was 3.75 and deep acting was 3.77. The average of healthy lifestyle was 2.41, and the highest was 3.13 of personal relationship and the lowest was 1.91 of eating habits. There is a positive correlation between emotional labor-deep acting and healthy lifestyle. Flight attendants demand health services for physical exercise, stress and emotional labor management, healthy eating habits, emergency treatment, prevention of fatigue, cancer screening, sexual harassment prevention, sex education and etc. Conclusion: These results show that flight attendants need to various interventions for improving healthy lifestyle and reducing emotional labor. It is necessary to develop customized health promotion program suited to their job and general characteristics.

본 연구는 목적은 보육교사의 감정노동이 이직 의도에 미치는 영향에서 직무소진에 대한 매개 효과를 알아보고 이를 바탕으로 보육교사들의 직무소진 예방과 이직 의도를 감소시키는 방안 마련에 도움을 주고자 하는 데 연구의 필요성을 갖는다. 경기도 17개 시, 군 628명의 보육교사 설문을 받아 데이터 코딩을 거쳐 SPSS ver 24.0을 사용하여 통계적 처리를 하여, 빈도분석, 기술통계분석, 상관분석, 분산분석, 다중 회귀분석과 간접효과를 분석하기 위하여 3단계 매개 효과분석에서 더욱 정확하게 검증하기 위해 Sobel test를 실시하여, 보육교사의 일반적 특성에 따라 이직 의도에 어떤 차이가 있는가를 살펴보고 보육교사의 감정노동이 직무소진과 이직 의도에 미치는 영향을 분석하여, 정책적 시사점을 찾고자 한다. 첫째, 보육교사의 감정노동이 이직 의도에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째. 직무소진의 매개 효과 결과 1) 감정노동이 직무소진에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 2) 감정노동이 이직 의도에 미치는 영향 분석에서 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다, 3) 감정노동이 이직 의도에 미치는 영향과 직무소진의 매개 효과 검증에서 매개변수인 직무소진이 종속변수인 이직 의도에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다, 독립변수인 감정노동도 이직 의도에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 이를 바탕으로 보육교사들의 직무소진 예방과 이직 의도를 감소시키는 방안 마련에 기초자료를 제공하고자 한다.The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of job burnout on the effect of emotional labor of childcare teachers on turnover intention and to help the prevention of job burnout and the reduction of turnover intention of childcare teachers based on this.,The survey was conducted by 628 childcare teachers in 17 cities and counties in Gyeonggi-do, and statistical processing was conducted using SPSS ver24.0 through data coding. In order to analyze frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, ANOVA, multiple regression analysis and indirect effects, Sobel test was conducted to verify more accurately in three-step mediating effect analysis. First, the emotional labor of child care teachers had a positive effect on turnover intention. Second, the emotional labor of child care teachers had a positive effect on turnover intention.,The mediating effect of job burnout 1) Emotional labor had a positive effect on job burnout.,2) The effect of emotional labor on turnover intention was found to have a positive effect on the effect of emotional labor on turnover intention and the mediating effect of job burnout was found to have a positive effect on turnover intention, which is a dependent variable, and emotional labor, an independent variable, also had a positive effect on turnover intention. Based on this, it is intended to provide basic data for preventing job burnout and reducing turnover intention of childcare teachers.

An emotional labor perspective on the relationship between customer orientation and job satisfaction

The necessity for emotional labor has been seriously called into question with strong evidence linking it to negative wellbeing outcomes and positive performance outcomes. However, extant inconsistent findings individual-based selling model make it difficult to draw reliable conclusions about the effects of emotional labor in retail team-based selling model. The aim of this study is to unpack the effects of two emotional labor strategies –surface acting and deep acting-on retail sales teams’ performance with a focus on the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Dyadic survey data is collected from 82 retail sales teams in China. We found surface acting and deep acting influence customer-related performance and employee- related performance in distinct ways. Specifically, surface acting increases emotional exhaustion, which in turn decreases sales team members’ task performance and customer loyalty, supporting a full mediation model. Deep acting was not linked to emotional exhaustion but directly increase...

This study attempted to verify the influence of emotional labor types on psychological burnout and job satisfaction and to determine the mediating effects of psychological burnout in emotional labor type-job satisfaction relationship. For this, a questionnaire survey was conducted among a total of 367 beauty salon employees in Chungcheong·Daejeon and reliability analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were performed using SPSS 18.0. The study results found the following: First, according to analysis of the relationship among emotional labor, psychological burnout and job satisfaction, both surface acting and deep acting had an influence on psychological burnout, which in turn decreased job satisfaction. In the case of deep acting, employees provide services with willingness depending on their emotion. Because emotional dissonance does not occur, the degree of psychological burnout decreases. In the case of surface acting, on the contrary, the employees express their emotion according to the guideline, keeping what they have in mind unexposed. As a result, psychological burnout is greater, causing negative results. Second, according to analysis of the mediating effects of psychological burnout between emotional labor and job satisfaction, a partial mediating effect was observed between deep acting and job satisfaction. In contrast, a completing mediating effect was found in surface acting-job satisfaction relationship. The said results indicate that in the cosmetology industry, even though emotional labor is inevitable, the policies and personal efforts to reduce psychological burnout would eventually increase job satisfaction. Therefore, cosmetology salons need to take preventive measures to reduce the intensity of emotional labor, search for a reasonable management plan for the establishment of diverse policies and develop a systematic personnel management system that could maximize job satisfaction before psychological burnout starts to occur.

Objective This study investigated the moderating and mediating effects of flourishing among child-care teacher's emotional labor and burnout. Methods The participants included 243 child-care teachers in daycare centers in Jeju. To verify moderating effect of flourishing in relation between surface acting and burnout, 2-way ANOVA was used. To verify mediating effect of flourishing in relation between deep acting and burnout, the hierarchical regression and bootstrapping analyses were used. Results First, the surface acting of emotional labors showed significantly positive effect with burnout and the deep acting of emotional labors shows significantly negative effect with burnout. And the surface acting of emotional labors shows significantly negative effect with flourishing and the deep acting of emotional labors shows significantly positive effect with flourishing. Also the flourishing shows significantly negative effect with burnout. Second, it was revealed that the flourishing plays a role as moderator in relation between surface acting and burnout. Finally, it was revealed that the flourishing plays a role as mediator in relation between deeping acting and burnout. Conclusion This study illustrates that flourishing acts as differently in relation to emotional labor (surface acting/deep acting) and burnout. Keywords: emotional labor, surface acting, deep acting, burnout, flourishing

Few research studies have discussed the two variables of emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, and even fewer have examined flight attendants as the research subject. The current study employed a questionnaire method to examine 353 Taiwanese flight attendants’ feelings about emotional labor, the status of their emotional exhaustion, and the relationship between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion. The research results indicate that: 1) while the degree of emotional labor operating on female flight attendants is on the medium to high side, the attendants’ perception of emotional exhaustion is only medium; 2) female flight attendants’ emotional labor has a significant positive correlation with their emotional exhaustion; and 3) among the perspectives of emotional labor, the qualities of “deep emotional masking” and “multiformity” have a significant predictive effect on emotional exhaustion.