Tschan Rochat Zapf Not only Clients JOOP 2005

Special section
It’s not only clients: Studying emotion
work with clients and co-workers with
an event-sampling approach
Franziska Tschan
1
*, Sylvie Rochat
2
and Dieter Zapf
3
1
University of Neucha
ˆtel, Switzerland
2
Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Neucha
ˆtel, Switzerland
3
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
A group of 78 young employees in service and non-service professions reported 848
task related interactions at work over 1 week using a variant of the Rochester
Interaction Record which measured emotion work requirements, emotional
dissonance, and deviance. Multi-level analyses showed that dissonance was more likely
in interactions with customers, whereas deviance, that is, the violation of display rules
by acting out one’s felt emotion, was more likely in co-worker interactions. Well-being
in the interaction was lower (a) for interactions with emotion work requirements,
(b) for dissonance, even after controlling for felt negative emotions, and (c) for
deviance. Negative emotion displayed partially mediated the relationship between
deviance and well-being. Regarding the relationship of more stable job related attitudes,
psychosomatic complaints, and aggregated scores of social interactions, fewer effects
were found than in questionnaire studies, which may be due to the fact that only
interactions that lasted at least 10 minutes were assessed, as is customary in research
with this instrument. Among the effects found, however, many involved proportions
rather than frequency of interactions, which raises the possibility of balancing and
legitimizing effects of non-stressful interactions.
Many work related interactions require employees to control their behaviour and the
display of their emotions (Hochschild, 1983). Examples include nurses who have to
show compassion towards a patient, teachers who explain the same thing to a student
over and over again in a friendly and patient way, but have to act in a severe and stern
manner if the same student engages in a fight with a classmate, or a salesperson who has
to stay calm and polite vis-a
`-vis an angry customer. The requirement to display specific
emotions in front of customers (or clients, patients, students, etc., cf. Gutek, 1995) and
to manage one’s own emotions to achieve the required display, has been described as
* Correspondence should be addressed to Franziska Tschan, University of Neuchatel, Groupe de Psychologie Applique,
Faubourg de l’Hopital, 2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland (e-mail: [email protected]).
The
British
Psychological
Society
195
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2005), 78, 195–220
q2005 The British Psychological Society
www.bpsjournals.co.uk
DOI:10.1348/096317905X39666

emotional labour or emotion work (e.g. Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli &
Sutton, 1987; Zapf, 2002). Although emotion work is required because of its positive
effects for the organization, and because it may be a necessary part of accomplishing a
task, many researchers have identified unfavourable long-term consequences for those
who have to perform emotion work (e.g. Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Morris &
Feldman, 1997; Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000).
The requirement to display specific emotions in customer related and co-worker
interactions
Many everyday interactions are guided by norms and rules, and in many instances these
rules also include what emotions should be shown (Ekman & Friesen, 1969).
This implies that many of the emotions shown during interactions are in fact not felt, but
‘acted’, for example, if people try to disguise disappointment over a gift they do not like,
showing gratitude instead (Goffman, 1959; Hochschild, 1983). Display rules are
sometimes explicitly stated as role-expectations in organizations. For example, Disney
states its expectation as ‘first, we practice the friendly smile at all times with our guests
and among ourselves’, and employees at Disney are trained how to convey positive
emotions to Disney’s customers (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). Emotion display rules may also
ensue from professional norms, and may be part of professional training, for example, in
nursing, teaching professions, or law (Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989). Besides the rather
specific rules about how to behave in work-related interactions, more general, societal
norms exist. One of these is to be polite and friendly, and not to show rude or uncouth
behaviour in everyday interactions (Leary, 1996).
Emotion work as a job demand has been described and investigated mainly in service-
related professions, such as nursing (Smith, 1992), supermarket cashiers (Rafaeli, 1989),
call centre agents (Grebner et al., 2003; Zapf, Isic, Bechtoldt, & Blau, 2003), but also bill
collectors (Sutton, 1991), and police officers (Martin, 1999). That emotion work may also
be an issue in interactions with colleagues and supervisors at work, and thus present in
non-service as well as service occupations, has been largely neglected. Actually, the
Disney example mentioned above explicitly states display rules among colleagues.
Standards about what emotions should be displayed, or even felt in interactions with
colleagues may well be part of the corporate culture. For example, Kunda and van Maanen
(1999) cite from a ‘corporate culture handbook’ that employees are expected to be
‘enthusiastic’, ‘enjoy doing what they are doing’, and ‘show commitment no matter what
it takes’ (1999, p. 68). Besides explicitly stated organizational norms, widely shared rules
about interactions between colleagues at work have been described. They include being
friendly and polite, not criticizing each other in public, and maintaining a courteous and
friendly attitude even with colleagues that are not liked (Argyle & Henderson, 1985).
The extension of the concept of emotion work to interactions with colleagues has been
recommended by several researchers. Steinberg (1999) suggested including emotion
work aspects into job evaluations for managerial positions. Grandey, Tam, and Brauburger
(2002) and Totterdell and Holman (2003) included both customer and colleague related
events. Note that arguing for the relevance of emotion work for interactions with
colleagues is not incompatible with the notion that emotion work may be more
frequently encountered in service professions. After all, in these professions, one has to
interact with both colleagues and clients. This study investigates emotion work and its
relationship to well-being in service as well in non-service professions in interactions with
customers and co-workers.
Franziska Tschan et al.196

Dealing with emotion work requirements: authenticity, dissonance and deviance
Emotion work requirements imply emotion display rules, which prescribe what
emotion should be shown in a given interaction. In general, displaying a specific
emotion is interpreted by the interaction partner as a sign that the person actually feels
the emotion shown. If the person actually feels and displays the emotion that is
required, one can talk of authenticity or emotional harmony (Ashforth & Humphrey,
1993). However, this is not always the case, as people sometimes fake emotions in order
to comply with norms and rules. Emotional dissonance has been described as a situation
when an employee is required to display an emotion that is not genuinely felt in the
particular situation (Hochschild, 1983; Zapf, Vogt, Seifert, Mertini, & Isic, 1999; Zerbe,
2000). Consider, for example, a salesperson dealing with a customer who is upset.
In such a situation, the salesperson may feel angry, but remains friendly: the salesperson
suppresses the display of the negative emotion, and ‘fakes’ the required, positive
emotion, thus actively regulating emotional expression (Zapf, Seifert, Schmutte, Mertini,
& Holz, 2001). Emotional dissonance is not restricted to expressing a positive emotion
while not feeling it, although this may be a typical configuration. Dissonance may also
imply suppressing positive or negative emotions if the requirement is neutral
(e.g. a doctor who announces a serious illness to a patient), or deliberately expressing
negative emotions, even if one does not feel them (e.g. scolding a child who has done
something dangerous). Several authors (e.g. Hochschild, 1983; Zapf, 2002) distinguish
different mechanisms related to dissonance, such as deep acting (trying to feel the
emotion required) or automatic regulation, if display of the emotion is part of the
professional identity, or if the interaction is so well scripted that the emotion display can
be routinized (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Briner, 1999). In this paper, we use the term
dissonance to describe interactions where a person expresses the emotion required by a
display rule, but does not feel that particular emotion, thus doing ‘surface acting’
(Hochschild, 1983).
A discrepancy between display rules and felt emotions may, however, also be dealt
with by deviating from the display rule and displaying the felt rather than the required
emotion, as when a waitress gives a bad sneer to customers after they told her how to do
her job (Hall, 1993). This has been described as emotional deviance (Rafaeli & Sutton,
1987). Emotional deviance can be due to a lack of self-control in a given situation if one
loses one’s temper, but it may also be that deviance is part of a strategy for interacting
with particular people, or is shown because the emotion display rule is not accepted in a
given situation (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). Emotional deviance has often been
described as including the expression of negative emotions when a neutral or positive
requirement exists. However, other forms of deviance may also occur, for example
displaying positive emotions while the display rule prescribes neutral emotions.
Situational aspects of emotion work, dissonance or deviance
So far, emotion work has mostly been studied with regard to whole professions or with
regard to work constellations in general. Much less attention has been given to concrete
work-related interactions. However, emotion work requirements are at least partially
determined by situational characteristics (Co
ˆte ´, in press): although nurses have to be
friendly with all patients, they should be severe on finding out that a patient throws their
pills away. Martin (1999) observed that required emotional displays from police officers
differed as a function of situational aspects, robberies required aggressiveness, conflict
resolution required neutral emotions, and consoling an accident victim required
Emotion work in interactions at the workplace 197

empathy. Thus, emotional display rules are contingent on the specific characteristics of
different situations (Sutton, 1991).
What determines if a person shows dissonance or deviance? A recent study by
Totterdell and Holman (2003) found that (a) the willingness to meet display obligations
and (b) the requirement to regulate negative affects predicted dissonance. They also
found that negative events led to more dissonance when they involved customers as
compared with co-workers. This latter finding could be a sign of a greater ‘display
latitude’ (Kruml & Geddes, 2000; Morris & Feldman, 1997; Wharton, 1993), or weaker
display rules (Morris & Feldman, 1996) in interactions with co-workers as compared
with customer-related interactions. In comparison to the often explicit and specific
rules about how to deal with clients, rules about interaction with co-workers may be less
specified, leaving more leeway for ‘violation’. Furthermore, even when ‘acting out’
emotions is perceived as a violation of rules, such violations may be easier to ‘repair’,
because interactions with colleagues are part of long-term relationships, which are
based not mainly on immediate, but on long-term reciprocity (Gutek, 1995). This allows
for a sort of compensation (e.g. by excuses later on, or by providing enjoyable
interactions), and this compensation may occur with quite some delay. Norms for long-
term relationships may also specify behaviours quite opposite to those expected in
dealing with clients. Rules concerning relationships contain a requirement to be honest,
which implies the expectation that true emotions are shown (Argyle & Henderson,
1985). If the interaction partner realizes that emotions are faked, the intended effect of
dissonant behaviour may be reversed, as research on impression-management shows
(Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1989).
Based on these considerations, we state the following hypotheses concerning the
prediction of dissonance and deviance in interactions with clients or colleagues:
Hypothesis 1.1 In interactions requiring emotion work (display rules), dissonance will be more
likely if the interaction partner is a client as opposed to a colleague.
Hypothesis 1.2 In interactions requiring emotion work, deviance will be more likely if the
interaction partner is a colleague as opposed to a client.
Effects of emotion work, dissonance or deviance on interaction quality
Conceptually, a central focus in the study of emotion work has been the long-term
consequences of emotion work, both for the organization and for the employees.
Emotion work requirements as such have been postulated, and found, to increase stress
symptoms, such as burnout, and to decrease well-being (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002;
Grebner et al., 2003; Zapf et al., 1999). For example, Schaubroeck and Jones (2000)
found a positive relationship between the requirement to display positive emotions and
physical symptoms, even after controlling for age, gender, education, and negative
affectivity. With regard to job related attitudes as effects of emotion work requirements,
the evidence is mixed. Some studies found no relationship between emotion work and
job satisfaction (e.g. Zapf et al., 1999) but also associations between the requirement to
display positive emotions and enhanced well-being have been found (Adelmann, 1995;
Morris & Feldman, 1997). Insofar as emotion work requirements restrict the employee’s
latitude on how to manage interactions, it seems likely that it may have more negative
than positive consequences.
Emotional dissonance, however, shows a straightforward pattern in most studies.
In their case study on prison officers, Rutter and Fielding (1988) found that the need to
Franziska Tschan et al.198

suppress genuinely felt emotions was negatively correlated with job satisfaction, and
other studies yielded similar results (Dormann & Kaiser, 2002; Morris & Feldman, 1997).
Emotional dissonance has also been found to be related to symptoms of strain, such as
psychosomatic complaints, or irritability (e.g. Grebner et al., 2003), and depressed
mood (Erickson & Ritter, 2001). Most researchers consider emotional dissonance
the core element of stress caused by emotion work (e.g. Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002;
Zapf et al., 2001). Zapf et al. (1999) argue that complying with emotion work
requirements can be seen as a goal-directed action. If people can follow well rehearsed
scripts, the process can be automatized, without much regulation effort (Frese & Zapf,
1994; Zapf, 2002). However, emotional dissonance makes automatic regulation less
likely, and emotion management and faking the emotion may require additional effort
and a higher level of self-control, which has been found to be a limited resource
(Baumeister, Faber, & Wallace, 1999). Moreover, the literature on emotion regulation has
shown that the suppression of felt emotions is accompanied by heightened activity of
the sympathetic nervous system (Gross, 1998). It is associated with hypertension, self
reported negative health symptoms (King & Emmons, 1990), and exhaustion
(e.g. Grandey, 2003; Morris & Feldman, 1997; Zapf et al., 1999, 2001).
Emotional deviance is also likely to have negative consequences (Rafaeli & Sutton,
1987; Zerbe, 2000). Expressing not the required, but the felt emotion may be perceived
as a violation of interaction rules, and may contribute to unpleasant reactions of the
interaction partner. This is especially true if the emotion felt and shown is negative.
In addition, employees that show deviance may be punished by the organization, and/or
by clients. A salesperson who snaps back to customers may sell less and convey a bad
image of the organization, or an unfriendly waiter gets fewer tips (Crusco & Wetzel,
1984). Furthermore, deviance may be seen as unpleasant, and as a lack of self-control
also from the actor’s perspective, and thus be damaging to self-worth (Hall, 1993).
Although negative effects have been postulated for emotional deviance (Rafaeli &
Sutton, 1987; Zerbe, 2000), the effects of emotional deviance have not often been
examined empirically.
In most of the studies cited above, the effects of emotion work were conceived as
consequences of chronic strain caused by high frequency of emotion work
requirements, and emotional dissonance. Implicitly or explicitly, the idea that frequent
emotion work results in chronic strain rests on the assumption that emotion work must
have an immediate impact on the evaluation of the specific interaction. The theoretical
arguments for effects of emotion work are based on immediate effects occurring during
an interaction, and the long-term effects are in a way ‘extrapolated’ from this reasoning
(Rochat, 2004).
In this paper, we investigate interactions with emotion work requirements, and
assess the relationship of dissonance and deviance in such interactions with the
evaluation of the interaction. Investigating immediate effects of emotion work
requirements, dissonance, and deviance is necessary to understand the processes
involved and to substantiate the theoretical arguments that link emotion work to
potential long-term outcomes. Only a few studies have investigated emotion work on
the interaction level. For example, Totterdell and Holman (2003) studied emotion work
with an event sampling approach and showed that short term negative effects resulted
(emotional exhaustion) if emotions had to be faked. This study also sheds light on the
kind of emotions that typically are suppressed. In most dissonant interactions people
hide negative feelings and display positive or neutral emotions (Totterdell & Holman,
2003). We, therefore, assume that in most cases of emotional dissonance it is a positive
Emotion work in interactions at the workplace 199