Emotion regulation and its correlates in bank service jobs

To what extent, in what context and with what psychological consequences do service workers regulate their emotions so that they are in line with their job requirements? To answer these questions 112 Italian men and women working at various banks at the counter or as consultants were administered a questionnaire comprising several scales, and questions on sociodemographic and work-related variables. The results showed that Emotional labour (Hochschild 1983; Grandey 2000) is a relevant variable of bank service jobs: Workers perform both (a) surface acting, i.e., control the expression of their emotions vis-à-vis a client so that they are contextually appropriate (for example, they smile to an annoying client), and (b) deep acting, i.e., try to actually feel the required emotion; (c) feeling genuine emotions, i.e., effortlessly feeling the required emotions, also is a frequent experience of bank employees. Emotional exhaustion was correlated positively with surface acting, and negatively with genuine emotions; it implied less Life satisfaction, and Positive affect, but more Negative affect. Workers that reported enjoying a role balance were more satisfied with their life than those who experienced role overload, and were less emotionally exhausted. No significant differences between men and women were observed on most measures, whereas job-experience, and duration and frequency of client-interactions influenced Deep acting, Emotional exhaustion, and Role overload.