Are emotional labour strategies by nurses associated with psychological costs? A cross-sectional survey

Background: Emotional labour is an integral part of the role of nurses with surface and deep acting as the core emotional labour strategies. Surface acting involves the regulation of emotional expression with the aim of bringing it in line with organizational display rules, whereas deep acting aims at modifying the situation or perception of situations in order to change felt emotions, accordingly. Objectives: Since surface acting is thought to consume more cognitive control resources than deep acting, the study examines whether nurses' cognitive control deficits as a stable personal vulnerability factor exert stronger adverse interactive influences with surface acting on job strain than with deep acting. Design: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in combination with absence data referring to a time period of 12 months after administration of the questionnaires. Setting: A hospital and three nursing homes for the elderly located in a federal state in Germany. Participants: Questionnaires were distributed to the whole nursing staff of which 195 nurses filled in the questionnaire and permitted collecting their absence data (73% participation rate). Methods: In addition to descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations, confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical moderated regression analyses were performed. Results: Findings revealed significant positive relations of surface acting and cognitive control deficits with indicators of job strain, whereas deep acting was unrelated to strain. In addition, surface acting was found to interact stronger with cognitive control deficits in its relation to strain than deep acting. Compared to nurses with low levels of cognitive control deficits, the adverse influences of surface acting on burnout, depressive symptoms, and sum of days absent were much stronger when high levels of cognitive control deficits were reported. Conclusions: Consequently, interventions are needed to inform nurses on the detrimental influences of surface acting and train them in the daily use of deep acting as the healthier emotional regulation strategy. In addition, interventions targeted at the enhancement of the individual capacity for self-control would be beneficial to nurses' health. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.