The association between emotional labour, affective symptoms, and burnout in Australian psychologists

ABSTRACT

Objective

Psychology is a high burnout profession; however, little empirical research has examined the emotional labour (i.e., surface acting, deep acting, expression of naturally felt emotions) of psychologists who provide psychological therapy. The present study examined whether a relationship exists between emotional labour and wellbeing (operationalised as burnout and affective symptoms) in this sample, and whether individual or work-related factors moderate this relationship.

Method

113 Australian psychologists who provide regular psychological therapy responded to an anonymous, online, cross-sectional survey. This survey collected information on demographic and workplace variables; it also contained measures of emotional labour and wellbeing.

Results

The results indicated that, at a bivariate level, surface acting was a significant predictor of adverse wellbeing; deep acting had no predictive qualities; and the expression of naturally felt emotions was a significant predictor of improved wellbeing. Surface acting appeared to be the most salient predictor, and its relationship to burnout was moderated by compensation type.

Conclusions

Reported rates of burnout were high within our sample, and our findings suggest that the masking of emotions by psychologists (i.e., surface acting) may be a contributing factor to adverse wellbeing. These findings carry implications for psychological training and practice.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Psychologists work in emotion-eliciting environments, which can necessitate the regulation of their emotions.

2. Across industries, burnout arises when demands exceed resources; for psychologists, this may include instances in which the emotional demands of their work exceed their capacity to regulate effectively.

3. Emotional labour, or the regulation of emotions in the workplace, is a reliable predictor of adverse wellbeing in the general working population; however, there has been little empirical examination of emotional labour in psychologists.

What this topic adds:

1. Psychologists who provide therapy report high rates of burnout.

2. Psychologists adopt each emotional labour strategy (surface acting, deep acting, expression of naturally felt emotions) at comparable rates to previously published rates for workers in other work domains.

3. Surface acting is a salient predictor of burnout in psychologists, even when controlling for the engagement in deep acting or the expression of naturally felt emotions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional labour
• psychologists
• burnout
• depression
• anxiety
• stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/00050067.2023.2299668

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The term “symptoms” rather than “outcomes” is intentional to account for the limited causal inferences that can be drawn from largely cross-sectional and non-experimental literature.

2. In Australia, provisional registration as a psychologist requires completion of an undergraduate degree in psychology and commencement of a training pathway (internship and/or Masters program) to practice as a psychologist. Provisional psychologists are entitled to provide psychological services during their training under supervision. This training precedes general registration, where individuals may opt to then gain an endorsement in a specialised area of practice. Areas of practice include clinical psychology, forensic psychology, and neuropsychology, among others. Endorsements are presently only awarded after completing a Masters degree and an additional registrar program.

3. We judiciously selected variables that were theoretically relevant given the emotional labour literature and that were unlikely to introduce multicollinearity. For example, we did not include age or registration type as moderators since these overlapped with compensation type, which is theoretically more important.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship to Anthony D. Joffe.