The mediating effect of emotional labor strategies on the relationship between emotional labor staff self-efficacy and emotional dissonance

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Since Hochschild (1983) argued that the emotions of emotional labor workers are controlled and managed not by their individual voluntary will but by social class and structure as well as various external factors, most studies related to emotional labor have been carried out on the premise that emotional labor workers passively conduct emotional labor in accordance with emotional display rules set by companies. However, it is reasonable to think that emotional labor workers resort to an emotional labor strategy to enhance self-esteem and self-efficacy by themselves when they conduct emotional labor. It seems that service laborers have incentives to adopt an attitude and behavior in a strategic way to maintain and improve their own psychological wellbeing. The objective of this study is to find out whether the selection of emotional labor strategies, which are mainly divided into surface acting and deep acting, is done strategically to maintain and enhance the self-efficacy of emotional labor workers. Also, the function as a mediating variable, in the case of emotional dissonance resulting from emotional labor, is investigated for education service staff members who are working at four-year universities. All in all, the results of this study show that educational service workers are strategic decision-makers who employ an emotional labor strategy to enhance self-efficacy while reducing emotional dissonance in emotional labor processes occurring at their workplaces.