| Emotional labor is the management of emotions as part of one's job, a common requirement in customer service jobs. Much of the emotional labor research has been conducted in the field, without the benefit of experimental manipulation or control. The research seldom separates different emotional labor strategies from the type of emotion people are trying to manage. The current research fills this gap by studying emotional labor in a laboratory setting using a Conservation of Resources (COR) theory framework. In a 2x2 design, 123 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of two strategy conditions, either change their emotional expression (effortful acting) or act naturally (genuine acting), while watching an emotion-inducing video (positive versus negative). The hypotheses predicted that effortful acting should consume more resources than genuine acting, while watching the negative video should consume more resources than the positive video. These different resource costs should affect four outcome variables differently. State emotional exhaustion and subjective time, the perceived passage of time, should increase as more resources are consumed. On the other hand, task satisfaction and flow should be greater when there are more resources available. As predicted by the hypotheses, emotional labor strategy was found to significantly impact task satisfaction and flow, while video type significantly influenced state emotional exhaustion, task satisfaction, and subjective time. Implications for emotional labor research are discussed. |
