ABSTRACT
Background and objectives
The adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic both necessitate and obstruct emotional regulation and coping mechanisms. Despite growing interest in the connection between stress and spirituality, multilevel studies addressing day-level variance to understand how spiritual experiences and emotional regulation are linked with stress during this unique situation are scarce. This study aims to analyze how daily spiritual experiences (DSE) and daily emotional labor (EL) connect with the daily stress levels of employees during the pandemic.
Design and method
Data collected from 132 employees for five consecutive workdays (660 d-level, 132 person-level responses) were analyzed via Hierarchical Linear Modeling.
Results
Multilevel analysis provided evidence for the negative association between DSE and daily stress. The “faking emotions” and “hiding emotions” dimensions of daily EL were positively and significantly related to daily stress, while the “deep acting” dimension demonstrated no significant relationship. There was no evidence for the moderator role of DSE in the relationship between daily EL and stress.
Conclusion
The form of daily EL is crucial to understanding how it associates with daily stress. Although its buffering role on the adverse effects of EL is not significant, DSE directly relates to lower stress levels.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
All the data are available upon request from the corresponding author.
Ethical statement
The study involves human participants. The study protocol was accepted by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health (Protocol No: 2021-08-12T10_35_35.xml). Written consent was obtained from all participants before distributing the questionnaires.