Abstract:

The study was to investigate which one of the emotional labors, surface acting and deep acting, had better effect on later performance and self authenticity. Combined Muraven, Tice & Boumeister(1998)’s dual-task paradigm and Gross (1998)’s emotion regulation paradigm, conducting two kinds of emotional labor by instructions before watching emotional (most sadness and pain) eliciting film, while emotional consequences in subjective report, expressive behavior and physiological responses were measured, and then two effects of emotional labors, e.g. later mathematics performance and self authenticity, were tested as well. The results: (1) One need to pay significant effort and feel difficult to perform surface- and deep-action in emotional labors, and deep-action would attract more attention; (2) Both surface-action and deep- action resulted in decreased sadness, but deep-action activated stronger physiological response (e.g. less increased in R-R interval inter-beat).(3)surface-action resulted in poorer performance in mathematics and lower self authenticity. Conclusion: If it is needed to keep smiling under sad experience, deep-action is a positive one

Key words: emotional laboremotion regulationsurface-action, deep-actiondual-task paradigm