How does daily emotional labor affect emotional recovery the next day? The mediating roles of relaxation and rumination after work

Abstract

There has been a recent call to examine how emotional labor spills over to the non-work domains. This study investigates how emotional labor affects recovery from work. Our model demonstrates the differential impacts of emotional labor strategies (surface and deep acting) on recovery experiences after work, which, in turn, influence availability of emotional resources (high level of positive affect and low level of negative affect) the next morning. To understand phenomenon of recovery paradox, we posit two different recovery experiences as mediators: relaxation as a recovery-enhancing experience and negative rumination as a recovery-hindering one. Daily diary surveys were completed twice a day for ten workdays by 101 civil servants of Korean community service centers. To explore how emotional labor strategies influence the restoration of emotional resources, we applied multilevel path analysis. We found that the negative relationship between daily surface acting and the availability of emotional resources the next morning is mediated by negative rumination and relaxation during off-job times. Further, the positive relationship between daily deep acting and the availability of emotional resources the next morning is mediated by negative rumination during off-job time. These findings illustrate that daily engagement in emotional labor can lead to chronic health problems over the long term, due to inadequate recovery during off-job hours.