Stress Reactivity Influences the Relationship between Emotional Labor Strategies and Job Burnouts among Chinese Hospital Nurses

Abstract

Extant studies mostly focused on the buffering role of social and external organizational resources and personal mental resources. However, there is no research exploring the moderating role of personal physiological resources (e.g., stress reactivity). The present study is aimed at examining the interactive effect of emotional labor and stress reactivity on job burnout. The present study utilized cortisol content in a 1 cm hair segment as the biomarker of total stress reactivity in one month. The participants were 229 female hospital nurses randomly recruited from city hospitals, China. They self-reported their emotional labor strategies and job burnout syndromes and provided 1 cm hair segments closest to the scalp two weeks later after the survey. Hair cortisol content was determined with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The results revealed that hair cortisol can moderate the associations of surface acting with emotional exhaustion and personal burnout; of deep acting with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal burnout; and of expression of naturally felt emotions with professional inefficacy. In particular, nurses with high cortisol levels not only showed higher emotional exhaustion than those with low cortisol levels under high surface acting but also showed lower emotional exhaustion under low surface acting. A similar situation was true for nurses’ emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the context of deep acting. Nurses with low hair cortisol levels not only showed higher professional inefficacy than those with high hair cortisol levels under low expression of naturally felt emotions but also showed lower professional inefficacy under high expression of naturally felt emotions. Additionally, nurses with high hair cortisol levels showed lower personal burnout than those with low hair cortisol levels under low surface acting or high deep acting. In summary, the interaction pattern between stress reactivity and emotional labor was varied with the nature of emotional labor strategy and job burnout.

The Role of Personal Biological Resource in the Job Demands-Control-Support Model: Evidence From Stress Reactivity

“…These results extended the interaction pattern between job resources and work environments from the traditional perspective of the diathesis stress model to the novel perspectives of the differential susceptibility model and the vantage sensitivity model when the focus was expanded from the adverse and pathogenic responses in adverse environments to the adaptive responses in supportive environments. These results also provided another evidence for the extension of the JDR model to personal biological resources from social and organizational resources and personal mental resources, together with a recent finding that the interaction patterns between stress reactivity and emotional labor might follow the differential susceptibility model or the vantage sensitivity model (Deng et al, 2020).…”

“…Previous studies had demonstrated that stress reactivity could moderate the relationship between environmental factors and adolescents' psychological adaptations (Wiel et al, 2004;Obradovi et al, 2010Obradovi et al, , 2015Owens et al, 2018;Xu et al, 2019) and the relationship between emotional labor and job burnouts (Deng et al, 2020). Thus, we hypothesized that hair cortisol levels (or stress reactivity) could moderate the relationship between environmental factors and work-related outcomes among Chinese nurses.…”

“…The patterns of the three interaction models can be elucidated with the analysis of region of significance (RoS) and the proportion of interaction (PoI) index and the proportion affected (PA) index (Roisman et al, 2012). However, the interaction pattern between personal biological resources and work environments was not further confirmed with the analysis of RoS in a recent study demonstrating a moderating role of stress reactivity as personal biological resources in the relationship between stress reactivity and emotional labor (Deng et al, 2020). Therefore, it needs to follow the approach strategy and to further elucidate the interaction pattern between stress reactivity and work environments in terms of the analysis of RoS in combination with the PoI index and the PA index.…”

“…The activity of the HPA axis reflects individual's stress reactivity (Obradovi et al, 2010). Recently, a pilot study has demonstrated that the HPA activity (or stress reactivity) as personal biological resources can play a moderating role as personal mental resources do (Deng et al, 2020). However, the recent study only investigated the interaction of the HPA activity (or stress reactivity) with emotional labor (a special aspect of job demands) in predicting job burnouts.…”

“…Comparatively limited studies had examined the buffering role of personal mental resources, such as optimism, extraversion, compassion satisfaction, dispositional punishment and reward sensitivity, organization-based self-esteem, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, self-control capacity, political skill, and recovery experience as resource replenishment (Jex and Elacqua, 1999;Van Yperen and Snijders, 2000;Mkikangas and Kinnunen, 2003;Johnson and Spector, 2007;Chi et al, 2011;Pugh et al, 2011;Tremblay and Messervey, 2011;Schreurs et al, 2014;Diestel et al, 2015;Gu and You, 2019;Usman et al, 2020). To date, there are a few studies exploring the buffering effect of personal biological resources, such as sleep quality (Diestel et al, 2015) and stress reactivity (Deng et al, 2020).…”