Original Article
Driving it Home: How Workplace Emotional Labor Harms Employee Home Life
David T. Wagner,
Christopher M. Barnes, Brent A. Scott,
Corresponding Author
David T. Wagner
Singapore Management University
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to David Wagner, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, 50 Stamford Road #05-01, Singapore 178899; [email protected].Search for more papers by this authorDavid T. Wagner,
Christopher M. Barnes, Brent A. Scott,
Corresponding Author
David T. Wagner
Singapore Management University
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to David Wagner, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, 50 Stamford Road #05-01, Singapore 178899; [email protected].Search for more papers by this authorWe thank Fred Nelson for providing access to participants and for facilitating data collection. We also thank Maria Kraimer and two anonymous reviewers for their productive feedback throughout the review process.
Abstract
To date, the majority of research on emotional labor has focused on outcomes that occur in the workplace. However, research has yet to consider the possibility that the daily effects of emotional labor spill over to life outside of work, even though a large body of literature examining the spillover from work life to home life indicates that work experiences influence employees after they leave the workplace. Accordingly, we examined the influence of day-to-day surface acting on 3 types of theoretically derived stress outcomes experienced at home: emotional exhaustion, work-to-family conflict, and insomnia. In an experience sampling field study of 78 bus drivers, we found that daily surface acting was connected to increases in each of the outcomes noted above. Moreover, surface acting had an indirect effect on emotional exhaustion and insomnia via state anxiety.
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