Regulation of emotions in the helping professions: nature, antecedents and consequences

Do hospital employees regulate their emotions so they are in line with their job requirements? What effects do such regulation processes have on workers’ psychophysical wellbeing? What variables mediate their frequency, nature, and effects? To answer these questions, Italian men and women (N=180) working at a hospital as nurses, doctors, or in other technical roles, were administered a questionnaire comprising several scales, plus questions on sociodemographic and work-related variables. Results showed the regulation of felt emotions, that is, Emotional Labour (Hochschild, 1983) is a relevant variable of such jobs. Workers performed both (a) Surface Acting, that is, controlling expressed emotions so they are contextually adequate, and (b) Deep Acting, that is, trying to actually feel the required emotion; plus (c) Emotional Consonance, that is, effortlessly feeling the job-required emotions, was also a frequent experience for employees. Further, results showed the nature and frequency of such regulation processes have significant relations with both objective job-related features, such as the time spent in listening to patients, and with psychological variables such as burnout, and pleasurable emotions.