The impact of emotional labor towards professional identity among psychological counsellors in China

Abstract

Background: Professional identity is an important personal resource at work, especially for psychological counsellors who deal with various issues related to the mental health of their clients. However, up to date there are limited studies concerning emotional labor and professional identity among psychological counsellors. Therefore, the emotional labor strategies used by counsellors to preserve their mental health and attain professional identity is worthy to be examined. Methods: This study adopted a cross-sectional survey-based approach in which 180 respondents were asked to complete a survey. Further analyses were carried out via SPSS and Lisel version 8.7. Results: In this study it is apparent that emotional diversity has a significant relationship towards professional identity. Conclusions: This study has proved that three dimensions of emotional labour (emotional diversity, expression rules and deep acting) does have a positively significant relationship towards the total scores of professional identities.