Towards explaining emotional labor the role of emotional discrepancies /

by Barger, Patricia B.

Jennifer Z. Gillespie, Advisor While previous research has posited that organizational display rules and employee affect are important predictors of emotional labor, the mechanism underlying these is unclear. The current study offers the concept of emotional discrepancy as a variable that may help explain how display rules and affect give rise to emotional labor. Emotional discrepancies are created when employees’ affect is discrepant from the organizational display rule, thereby motivating them to engage in emotional labor to reduce the discrepancy. A laboratory simulation was conducted whereby participants acted as either a bill collector or campus tour guide. The results revealed that emotional discrepancy significantly predicted emotional labor and dispositional affect and display rules interacted to predict emotional discrepancies. Lastly, the results indicated that emotional discrepancy mediated the relationship between display rules and emotional labor, pointing to the importance of including this construct in future emotional labor models. Implications and future directions are discussed. iii