The boomerang effect: How nurses’ regulation of patients’ affect associates with their own emotional exhaustion and affective experiences.

Abstract

Recent research has shown that the intentional regulation of others’ affect has effects not only on the target (e.g., a patient) of the regulation, but also on the agent (e.g., a nurse). In particular, the use of intentional interpersonal affect regulation strategies has been found to predict employees’ emotional exhaustion (EEx). Use of affect-worsening strategies is associated with an increase in EEx, whereas the effect of using affect-improving strategies is less clear. Another relevant consequence of interpersonal affect regulation is its effect on affective experiences, which is one of the main determinants of job attitudes. This study tests the relationships between the interpersonal affect regulation strategies that nurses use to regulate their patients’ affect and the nurses’ EEx and affective experiences. A longitudinal 2-wave field study was conducted in sample of nurses. Participants completed a questionnaire on 2 different occasions, 2 months apart (Time 1 [T1], Time 2 [T2]). Of the 141 participants at T1, 103 also completed the survey at T2. Longitudinal hierarchical regression analyses showed that using affect-worsening strategies was a significant predictor of nurse’s EEx, whereas using affect-improving strategies did not significantly predict their EEx. For affective experiences, use of affect-worsening strategies was related to nurses experiencing low-activation negative affect (e.g., feeling depressed); whereas affect-improving strategies was related to them experiencing low-activation positive affect (e.g., feeling calm). Results support the view that intentional regulation of patients’ affect needs to be considered not only in relation to the patients’ perception of service quality but also from the perspective of nurses’ well-being.