Emotional Demands and Emotional Dissonance in the workplace: effects on well-being and workplace mood

Abstract

Theoretical background. The connection between work-related stress and psychosocial risks and workers’ health and safety has been confirmed in a wide range of studies all over the world. According EU-OSHA (2016), "while acknowledging the role of individual dispositions and general life circumstances, it has been shown that stress stemming from work-related factors may significantly affect workers’ functioning in and outside work". In the same report, focused on emerging risks, it is stated that "every job has some degree of pressure involved, but with proper monitoring, the allocation of adequate resources and support, workers should be in a position to deal with these pressures while remaining healthy and productive": according to this research, conducted by EU-OSHA in 28 European countries, among the sources of major stress there is some connected to emotional regulation, such as "having to deal with difficult customers, patients, pupils, etc. (58%) or "poor communication or cooperation within the organisation (17%). Hochschild (1983) called emotional labour the process by which employees manage their emotions to meet organizationally mandated emotional display rules or norms concerning. When an employee must express an emotion he or she does not feel, or repress felt emotions to meet organizational display rules, is lead to emotional dissonance, which is connected with a clear diminution of personal well-being (Sheldon et al., 1997). The aim of this work is to explore the connections between emotional demands and emotional dissonance with personal well-being in a sample of italian workers. Instruments, participants and procedures. To assess work demands, resources, and some work psychosocial effect (such as the need for recovery, or work pleasure), we used the italian version of Questionnaire on Experience and Assessment of Work (QEEW, van Veldhoven & Broersen, 1999; van Veldhoven & Meijman, 1994; Pace et. al., 2010); to assess the emotional dissonance we used a scale originally developed by Brotheridge and Lee (2003); to assess psychological strain we used the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12, Goldberg and Williams, 1988). We collected 427 subjects from many different companies (public/state-owned companies and private companies, representing different economic sectors and productive). We conducted multiple regression analyses, using the psychosocial variables as dependend variables. Results and conclusions. We found that scales connected with emotional labour, such as "emotional demands" (QEEW) and "emotional dissonance" were connected with the psycological strain (GHQ-12 or "need for recovery"), more than aspects that are generally (e.g. "remuneration" or "equity") generally considered to be of greater importance to affect workers' well-being. Future research directions are discussed that can advance our theoretical understanding of how emotional labour interact to affect employees well-being.