Being Recovered as an Antecedent of Emotional Labor: A Diary Study

Emotional labor is ubiquitous in service work, but little is known about what enables service employees to use desirable strategies such as deep acting. Applying conservation of resources theory, we hypothesized that being recovered is a crucial resource for deep acting, especially for employees with low customer orientation and low positive affectivity, and even needed for surface acting when employees have high negative affectivity. Sixty-five service employees answered 298 daily surveys. Multilevel analysis showed that morning being recovered predicts daily deep acting, but not surface acting. When being recovered, employees with low customer orientation engaged more in deep acting, whereas employees with high negative affectivity engaged more in surface acting. The findings highlight the role of different resources for emotional labor.