An examination of within-person variance in contextual display rules and deviation from display rules

Abstract

Contextual display rules refer to perceptions of the particular emotions that should be displayed in a specific set of circumstances. As such, it is important to examine within-person variance in such perceptions within the dynamic context of real-life organizations. To this end, experience sampling methodology was used to highlight within-person variance in display rules and examine event-level predictors of these contextual display rules. Thirty-nine university staff members were surveyed four times per day about their most recent interaction. Employee momentary affect (pleasantness and activation) and relationship with the interaction target (solidarity and relative power) were examined as predictors of both contextual display rule perceptions and deviation from those display rules. Pleasantness of affect related positively to the level of expression allowed by the display rule, whereas activation of affect and target solidarity related positively to deviation from display rules. Complex interactions were also found between the predictors, further highlighting the complexity of the emotional labour process.

Keywords:

• display rules
• emotional labour
• emotional deviance
• solidarity
• power

Notes

1. In response to a reviewer’s concerns, we collected additional data to verify that the prescriptive display rules of our participants (university staff members) did indeed require the expression of positive and suppression of negative emotion. We administered a display rule measure developed by Diefendorff et al. (2006) to two groups of individuals (1) original participants and (2) a new sample of university staff members (N = 61) recruited in an identical manner. Respondents were asked to indicate (on a 5-point scale) the extent to which certain behaviours are expected in order to be effective on the job. Eleven (28%) of our original participants completed the survey, and these individuals reported high levels of demands to express positive emotions to others (M = 4.65, SD = .40), express positive emotions about the job (M = 4.23, SD = 0.80), and suppress negative emotions (M = 4.30, SD = 0.77). The new sample also reported relatively high levels of demands to express positive emotions to others (M = 4.41, SD = 0.75), express positive emotions about the job (M = 4.07, SD = .88), and suppress negative emotions (M = 3.86, SD = 1.00).

2. According to his or her day-level data, this participant seems to have interacted with others over the phone more frequently than once a day; therefore, we decided to include this participant’s data.

3. Refers to the within-person variance in raw emotional expression score, not emotional deviance. One hundred per cent of the variance in DDR was within-person, because this variable was made up of the residual from a level-1 regression analysis.

4. Because the four-way interaction of solidarity, power, pleasantness, and activation was not statistically significant, we also conducted the analysis excluding this term from the model. The pattern of results did not change. We therefore report the analyses with the four-way interaction for completeness.

5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for these ideas.