Emotional labor and employee outcomes: A meta‐analysis
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Author | Nicole M. Humphrey |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12818 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Emotional labor and employee outcomes:
A meta-analysis
Nicole M. Humphrey
Department of Political Science, University of
Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
Correspondence
Nicole M. Humphrey, Department of Political
Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables,
FL, USA.
Email: nhumphrey@miami.edu
Abstract
While there is agreement among scholars that people-work
requires emotional labor, there is still some uncertainty
about the consequences of emotional labor for employees.
This article conducts a random-effects meta-analysis includ-
ing 545 correlations across 175 primary studies to explore
the relationship between emotional labor, burnout, and job
satisfaction. The meta-analysis suggests that emotional
labor can be both harmful and beneficial to employees,
depending on the emotional labor strategy used, that is, sur-
face acting or deep acting. In addition, the meta-regression
shows that effect sizes between emotional labor and
employee outcomes (i.e., burnout and job satisfaction) differ
in collectivist and individualist cultures. The article con-
cludes by discussing the implications of these findings for
research and practice.
1|INTRODUCTION
Public sector organizations are called upon to solve complex problems and serve their communities. As members of
these organizations, public employees must manage constituent expectations, while also working collaboratively with
others in their organization. In this role, many public servants must participate in interpersonal transactions that
require emotional labor to complete to core functions of their jobs.
Emotional labor represents the effort employees put forth “to express job-appropriate emotions and/or sup-
press inappropriate emotions”(Mastracci & Adams, 2019). The concept of emotional labor was first coined in 1983
by sociologist, Arlie Hochschild. In her initial work examining the workplace experiences of flight attendants,
Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as, “the management of feeling to create publicly observable facial and
bodily display”(p. 7). Additionally, Hochschild (1983) emphasized that emotional labor was compensated work that
represents part of an employee's job requirements (Hochschild, 1983; Mastracci et al., 2014). By defining emotional
labor, Hochschild's (1983) work gave name to a task seen in most jobs, but often not explicitly discussed within aca-
demic scholarship.
Received: 23 June 2021 Revised: 23 October 2021 Accepted: 30 November 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12818
422 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Public Admin. 2023;101:422–446.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
As the concept of emotional labor became more widespread in organizational research throughout the
late-1980s and early-1990s, scholars began to explore the consequences of emotional labor, with an emphasis on
individual employee outcomes, such as burnout and job satisfaction (see Adelmann, 1989; Adelmann, 1995;
Wharton, 1993). With decades of research exploring the influence of emotional labor on burnout and job satisfac-
tion, a robust collection of literature exists to understand employee-level consequences of emotional labor. Although
other studies have used meta-analytic procedures to study emotional labor (see Bono & Vey, 2005; Hülsheger &
Schewe, 2011; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013), this work offers additional insights on emotional labor and employee
outcomes that make specific contributions to public management scholarship.
First, this study highlights the significance of culture in the performance of emotional labor—a topic of relevance
among public management scholars studying emotional labor (see Lu & Guy, 2019; Mastracci & Adams, 2019;
Mastracci & Hseish, 2016). As communities become more culturally diverse, public organizations will need a deeper
understanding of how emotional labor intersects with culture to improve employee experiences and effectively serve
the public. Second, this study highlights the multidimensionality of emotional labor, and the significance deep acting
has on improving employee outcomes, especially in the public and nonprofit sectors. Notably, the meta-regression
indicates the relationship between deep acting and job satisfaction is stronger in the public and nonprofit sectors
than in the private sector. This may suggest that when performing deep acting, public and nonprofit employees are
able to feel greater meaning from their work, generating higher levels of job satisfaction. Finally, this study addresses
calls for more research on the potential positive consequences of emotional labor that can help organizational
leaders support employees (Humphrey et al., 2015).
Through the use of meta-analytic procedures, this study explores the relationship between emotional labor,
burnout, and job satisfaction, through the following steps. First, the article offers a review of key literature. Next, is a
presentation of methods, including a discussion of how primary studies were identified and coded, as well as an
explanation of the meta-analytic procedure guiding this work. Finally, the study presents the results, which suggest
that among the different types of emotional labor, surface acting has the most harmful relationship with employee
burnout and job satisfaction. In addition, the meta-regression indicates the relationship between emotional labor and
employee outcomes varies in collectivist and individualist cultures. The article concludes with a discussion of implica-
tions for theory and practice.
2|EMOTIONAL LABOR AND EMPLOYEE OUTCOMES
Emotional labor scholarship has a broad focus that encompasses several research areas. One initial research domain
that remains popular today is research exploring the influence of emotional labor on individual employee outcomes
(Steinberg & Figart, 1999). Scholars have shown a continued interested in this topic because of the multidimensional
quality of emotional labor and how it relates to different outcomes of interest. This creates several opportunities for
scholars to study various relationships based on which dimension they choose to explore. In this study, emotional
labor is operationalized through the dimensions of surface acting and deep acting, while employee-level outcomes of
emotional labor are operationalized through burnout and job satisfaction (see Table 1).
2.1 |Emotional labor: Surface acting and deep acting
Research suggests that employees perform emotional labor in response to display rules (Ashforth &
Humphrey, 1993; Diefendorff & Richard, 2003). Display rules are expectations of appropriate emotional expressions
that regulate employee behavior at work (Buckner & Mahoney, 2012). Scholarship often discusses employees par-
taking in two types of emotional labor when responding to display rules: surface acting and deep acting.
HUMPHREY 423
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