Effect of Emotion Regulation at Work

Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory of stress and personal resource allocation perspective, we examined the direct relationship between emotional labor strategies (i.e. surface and deep acting), and outcomes (i.e. psychological strain, and creativity). In addition, we investigated the indirect relationship between emotional labor strategies and outcomes via job stressors (i.e. challenge and hindrance stressors). We collected lagged survey data from service sector employees in Italy. Further, we tested the data using regression analysis. We found that surface acting predicted both psychological strain and creativity and that indirect relationships between surface acting and outcomes via hindrance stressor were also significant. In contrast, deep acting predicted only psychological strain but not creativity and that indirect relationship between deep acting and psychological strain via challenge stressor was significant, our data failed to support indirect relationship with creativity. Our results showed that employee emotion regulation strategies are related to work stressors. Moreover, surface acting is negatively related to creativity, at the same time both emotional labor strategies lead to psychological strain. We have built and tested a theoretical model thereby we have attempted to expand the scope of emotion regulation, stress-related literature, and creativity research by investigating the mechanism and outcomes of emotion labor.