The regulation of emotions, life satisfaction, and burnout in bank service- job employees

Do service workers regulate their emotions so that they are in line with their job requirements? Italian men and women (N=91) working as bank consultants or at the counter were administered a questionnaire comprising several scales, plus questions on sociodemographic and work-related variables. The results showed that Emotional labour (Hochschild 1983; Grandey 1999) is a relevant variable of such jobs: Workers perform both (a) surface acting (SA), i.e., vis-a-vis a client express only contextually appropriate emotions (for example, by smiling to an annoying client), and (b) deep acting (DA), i.e., try to actually feel the required emotion; (c) feeling genuine emotions (GE), i.e., effortlessly feeling the required emotions, is a frequent experience too. SA, not surprisingly, is negatively related to GE. As regards the main correlates of emotional labour measured in this study, results showed that feeling GE tended to be less likely the longer the interaction with a client; the frequency of interactions was related significantly to emotional labour too: negatively as regards GE, positively as regards SA. Likewise, GE was less likely the higher the number of years spent in the present job position. Life satisfaction (Diener 1984) was related negatively to SA, positively relation GE. Similarly, emotional labour correlated with one or more Burnout components level: SA was positively related to Emotional exaustion and to Depersonalization, whereas feeling GE was negatively related to Job realization. Not surprisingly, .burnout was related, negatively, to Life satisfaction, and to Quality of felt emotions (Panas; Watson et al. 1988): Negative emotions were felt more by Exausted and Depersonalized workers, Positive emotions were felt less by Unsatisfied ones. No significant differences were observed on most measures due to gender, civil status, or number of children.