Open AccessWorkplace surface acting and marital partner discontent: Anxiety and exhaustion spillover mechanisms.
Author(s) -
Morgan A. Krannitz,
Alicia A. Grandey,
Songqi Liu,
David Almeida
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of occupational health psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.532
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1939-1307
pISSN - 1076-8998
DOI - 10.1037/a0038763
Subject(s) - psychology , emotional exhaustion , social psychology , spillover effect , anxiety , emotional labor , mood , job satisfaction , perception , work–family conflict , work (physics) , burnout , clinical psychology , engineering , mechanical engineering , neuroscience , psychiatry , economics , microeconomics
Surface acting (i.e., faking and suppressing emotions at work) is repeatedly linked to employee negative moods and emotional exhaustion, but the consequences may also go beyond work boundaries. We provide a unique theoretical integration of these 2 emotional labor consequences with 2 work-to-family conflict mechanisms, mood spillover and resource drain, to explain why surface acting is likely to create marital partner discontent (i.e., partner's perceived work-to-family conflict and desire for the employee to quit). A survey of 197 hotel managers and their marital partners supported that managers' surface acting was directly related to their partner wanting them to quit, and indirectly to partner's perception of work-to-family conflict via exhaustion consistent with the resource drain mechanism. Anxiety from surface acting had an indirect mediating effect on marital partner discontent through exhaustion. Importantly, controlling for dispositional negativity and job demands did not weaken these effects. Implications for theory and future research integrating work-family and emotional labor are discussed.