%A LIAO Huahua; YAN Aimin %T Understanding emotional labor from a contingent perspective: A review on moderating variables and mechanisms %0 Journal Article %D 2017 %J Advances in Psychological Science %R 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2017.00500 %P 500-510 %V 25 %N 3 %U {https://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlkxjz/CN/abstract/article_3746.shtml} %8 2017-03-15 %X

Exploration of moderators has been one of the major theoretical focus of emotional labor literature in recent years. Our review on the empirical studies indicated that a great variety of variables in three aspects—individual difference, job context and culture—had significant moderating effects on the effects of emotional labor. By taking a contingent perspective on emotional labor, we found that: (I) the display rules at organizational, industrial and cultural levels could exert different yet related influence on individual emotion expression in workplace; (II) the potential detrimental effect of surface acting could be possibly buffered, eradicated or even turned into positive one by means of either individual internal mechanism or organizational management intervention; (III) deep acting had a positive effect consistently across individuals and contexts; (IV) cultural context functioned as an important boundary condition for emotional labor process. It was revealed that both emotional labor requirements and regulation behaviors could possibly bring benefits to employees.