Suppressing Positive Emotional Displays at Work: an Analysis of the Individual and Organizational Consequences Among Nurses
Year: 2007
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The current study sought to examine a neglected form of emotional labor, suppressing positive emotional displays.Drawing from the work of Gross (2002) on emotional regulation and Fredrickson (2006) on her broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, I developed a conceptual model linking suppressed positive emotional displays to lower resilience through changes in positive affect.Further, I explored role identification as an important moderator of this relationship.Because nursing is an occupation increasingly burdened with demands to suppress positive emotions, I tied resilience to several organizational and individual outcomes that have lately been problematic for nurses, including burnout, work-family interference, health, and turnover intentions.Tests of structural regression models indicated support for most hypothesized relationships.Suppressed positive emotional displays had a small, but statistically significant, negative, indirect effect on resilience through positive affect.No support was found for role identification as a moderator, although some main effects on other variables in the model were discovered through subsequent exploratory analyses.Resilience was found to have both direct effects on all three terminal outcomes (workfamily interference, general health, and turnover intentions), as well as indirect effects through burnout.Implications, future research directions, and limitations to be addressed in future research are discussed.
Author: Jason J. Dahling
Institution: University of Akron
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2602475502