Emotional labor and family quality: the role of work-family positive spillover

Abstract

There is increasing research interest in both types of emotional labor at work (i.e. surface acting and deep acting), but the effects of emotional labor at work on employees’ emotional labor at home and their family members’ family quality have not yet been explored. Drawing on work-family enrichment theory, this study investigated the mechanism underlying the relationship between employees’ emotional labor at work and their spouses’ perceived family quality by focusing on the mediating role of employees’ emotional labor at home and the moderating role of work-to-family positive spillover (WFPS). The results from a time-lagged three-wave survey of 193 Chinese employee-spouse dyads indicated that surface acting at home mediated the relationship between surface acting at work and spousal ratings of family quality. Although deep acting at work was positively related to deep acting at home, deep acting at home was not significantly related to family quality. WFPS strengthened the relationship between surface acting at work and surface acting at home. This study extends emotional labor theories to the family domain and provides insights into the mediating mechanisms and boundary condition through which emotional labor at work relates to spouses’ perceptions of family quality. The implications for theory and management practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• Deep acting
• emotional labor
• family quality
• surface acting
• work-family positive spillover

Notes

1. We use the phrases ‘emotion work’ and ‘emotional labor’ interchangeably in this paper. The concepts of emotional labor and emotion work are often used interchangeably (Bolton, 2003; Zapf, 2002), although emotion work is often preferred in the family literature (Erickson, 1993, 2005; DeVault, 1999; Seery & Corrigall, 2009), whereas emotional labor is often used in organizational settings (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Morris & Feldman, 1997).

2. λ = Sqrt(α); σ² = 1 * (1 –α); α = (α₁ × α₂ + r²)/(1 + r²).