Surface Acting or Deep Acting, Who Need More Effortful? A Study on Emotional Labor Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Frontstage nursing and backstage growth: The emotional labour of student nurses in Dutch nursing homes

The complex emotional work of nurses calls for more recognition of emotional labour and the incorporation of emotional labour in nursing education. Based on participant observation and semistructured interviews, we describe the experiences of student nurses in two nursing homes for elderly people with dementia in the Netherlands. We analyse their interactions using Goffman's dramaturgical view on the front and backstage behaviour and the distinction between surface acting and deep acting. The study reveals the complexity of emotional labour, as nurses swiftly adapt their communication styles and behavioural strategies between settings, patients, and even between moments within one interaction sequence, which shows that the theoretical binaries fail to fully capture their skills. Although student nurses take pride in their emotionally taxing work, the societal undervaluation of the nursing profession negatively impacts their self-image and ambitions. More explicit recognition of these complexities would enhance their self-appreciation. This calls for a professional 'backstage area' that allows nurses to articulate and strengthen their emotional labour skills. Educational institutions should provide this backstage for nurses-in-training to strengthen these skills as part of the professional skill set.

Are library staff autonomous? The influence of routines and the development of workarounds

As knowledge workers, library staff are assumed to be highly autonomous, meaning that they are in control of how work is done. Yet, this work is heavily influenced by the expectations of others, and the expectation to take control can pressure staff to overwork. In this qualitative study, 13 public library staff members engaged in think-alouds (TAs) and semi-structured interviews (SSIs) aimed at uncovering potential misalignments between a staff member’s own prescriptive expectations for library work and the expectations of management, customers, colleagues, and technological and material artifacts. Findings suggest that public library staff have several expectations for how work will be done and, at times, want the freedom to control work in ways that match these expectations. They devise and implement defiance workarounds aimed at reinforcing their own expectations in the face of conflicting expectations from other system actors. Yet, autonomy is a multifaceted concept that goes beyond the mere need for control and, sometimes, giving up control meant that other needs were fulfilled. This study advances research on the nature of workplace autonomy and the active role of workers in its expression. This study also has implications for library management, as it suggests important considerations for shared autonomy and workplace relationships, as well as the need to engage in efforts aimed at shifting problematic expectations in the library work system.

Is Teachers' Depression Contagious to Students? A Study Based on Classes' Hierarchical Models

Background

According to the theory of emotional contagion, emotions in one person can trigger similar emotions in groups within social networks. In schools, the class just like a small social network, that teachers' emotion, such as depression, might be contagious to their students. However, until now there is few studies reporting this issue. This study aims to explore whether teachers' depression be contagious to students and what mechanics behind the phenomenon.

Methods

Using Children's depression and cognitive scales to assess 2,579 students, meanwhile using teachers' depression and emotional labor scales assess 529 teachers. The nested data from 112 classes were analyzed.

Results

Teachers' depression was positively correlated with emotional labor surface and deep acting, and teachers' depression cross-level predicted students' depression inversely. For teachers with higher levels of depression, the teacher's deep acting affected their students' depression significantly, the more effortful the teachers' deep acting, the lower the degree of the students' depression, however, for teachers with lower levels of depression, the deep acting was not significant.

Conclusion

The results maybe state that depression in teachers is not readily transmitted to students, one of reasons is that teachers' emotional labor may alleviate the influence of their depression on students. However, considered that teachers' emotional labor was positively correlated with their depression, the teachers' emotional labor may be like a double-edged sword, while alleviating the influence of teachers' depression on students, it also deteriorated their own depression, making it impossible sustainable. For students' depression interventions based in school, including teachers maybe a better selection.

Emotional Labor Mediates the Relationship between Clan Culture and Teacher Burnout: An Examination on Gender Difference

Teacher burnout is a psychological syndrome affecting many teachers across the globe. Therefore, numerous studies have investigated antecedents of teacher burnout in order to provide recommendations to alleviate it. Although the studies pay attention to either the role of environmental factors, such as school culture, or individual factors, such as gender, in contributing to teacher burnout, they less frequently examine how teacher burnout is concurrently influenced by both factors. Thus, this study aims to understand the relationship between clan culture and burnout by examining the mediation effect of emotional labor and the moderating effect of gender. A sample of 467 primary and secondary schoolteachers from China participated in this study. The result demonstrated the following: (1) clan culture was negatively related to teacher burnout; (2) deep acting mediated the relationship between clan culture and teacher burnout, while surface acting did not; (3) the mediating effect of deep acting was only significant in the female group of teachers, not the male group.

Differential effects of rude coworkers and patients on nurses' safety performance: an emotional labor perspective

Purpose

This paper examines how nurses differentially respond, both emotionally and behaviorally, to incivility from coworkers (i.e. other healthcare staff) and from their patients. Specifically, the authors explore how coworker and patient incivility distinctly influence the extent to which nurses engage in emotional labor, which in turn, may impact nurses' safety performance. The authors further examine how nurses' hostile attribution biases exacerbate and mitigate these effects.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-week longitudinal study was conducted with 187 nurses in which they reported their experiences with incivility, surface and deep acting, hostile attribution biases and safety performance (i.e. safety compliance and participation).

Findings

Patient incivility led to more surface acting across all nurses. Further, the effects of coworker incivility on emotional labor strategies were conditional on nurses' hostile attribution biases (HAB). Specifically, coworker incivility led to more surface acting among nurses higher on HAB, and coworker incivility led to less deep acting among those lower on HAB. Finally, surface acting was associated with reduced safety participation, and deep acting was associated with greater safety compliance and safety participation.

Originality/value

The nursing context allowed the current research to extend understanding about how incivility affects an unexplored outcome—safety performance. The current research also offers a rare examination of the effects of incivility from multiple sources (i.e. coworkers and patients) and demonstrates the different processes through which incivility from these different sources impacts nurses' ability to perform safely.

Psychosocial predictors of emotional labour among employees of merged and acquired banks in Ibadan, South-West, Nigeria

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are common among financial institutions. This process often exerts immense pressure on employees of these institutions. Hence, this study touches on the significant but neglected human angle aspect of M&A. Therefore, the study examined psychosocial predictors of emotional labour among employees of merged and acquired banks in Ibadan. The study design is cross-sectional, which involves using a quantitative data collection method to elicit responses from the participants. Furthermore, the convenience sampling method was used and selected four hundred, and twenty-two employees acquired or merged during the consolidation and post-consolidation eras in South-Western Nigeria. A structured questionnaire that measured job satisfaction, acculturation, attitude to M&A and emotional labour was used to collect data from the respondents. Data analysis was done using SPSS software window 10.0. The mean age of respondents was 32 years, with a standard deviation of 7.31. The results showed that attitude towards M&A (β = 0.39; p < .05) and acculturation (β = 0.36; p < .05) were significant independent predictors of emotional labour. Furthermore, attitude towards M&A (β = 0.32; P < .05) and acculturation (β = 0.28; p < .05) were also significant independent predictors of emotional labour per se, personal efficacy, and for false face, respectively. Therefore, it was concluded that employees' emotions and job satisfaction should be factored into the management's strategic plan during M&A because the success or failure of this undertaking rests on them. Therefore, it was recommended that bank managers pay adequate attention to acculturation and the attitude of employees during a major organisational change to enhance emotional labour performance.

A systematic review of studies that used NIRS to measure neural activation during emotion processing in healthy individuals

Functional neuroimaging provides an avenue for earlier diagnosis and tailored treatment of psychological disorders characterised by emotional impairment. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) offers ecological advantages compared to other neuroimaging techniques and suitability of measuring regions involved in emotion functions. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the capacity of NIRS to detect activation during emotion processing and to provide recommendations for future research. Following a comprehensive literature search, we reviewed 85 journal articles, which compared activation during emotional experience, regulation or perception with either a neutral condition or baseline period among healthy participants. The quantitative synthesis of outcomes was limited to thematical analysis, owing to the lack of standardisation between studies. Although most studies found increased prefrontal activity during emotional experience and regulation, the findings were more inconsistent for emotion perception. Some researchers reported increased activity during the task, some reported decreases, some no significant changes, and some reported mixed findings depending on the valence and region. We propose that variations in the cognitive task and stimuli, recruited sample, and measurement and analysis of data are the primary causes of inconsistency. Recommendations to improve consistency in future research by carefully considering the choice of population, cognitive task and analysis approach are provided.

A Call for the Empirical Investigation of Tear Stimuli

Emotional crying is a uniquely human behavior, which typically elicits helping and empathic responses from observers. However, tears can also be used to deceive. "Crocodile tears" are insincere tears used to manipulate the observer and foster prosocial responses. The ability to discriminate between genuine and fabricated emotional displays is critical to social functioning. When insincere emotional displays are detected, they are most often met with backlash. Conversely, genuine displays foster prosocial responses. However, the majority of crying research conducted to date has used posed stimuli featuring artificial tears. As such it is yet to be determined how the artificial nature of these displays impacts person perception. Throughout this article, we discuss the necessity for empirical investigation of the differences (or similarities) in responses to posed and genuine tearful expressions. We will explore the recent adoption of genuine stimuli in emotion research and review the existing research using tear stimuli. We conclude by offering suggestions and considerations for future advancement of the emotional crying field through investigation of both posed and genuine tear stimuli.