Wiese
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Psychologisches Institut » Angewandte Psychologie » PD Dr. Bettina S. Wiese » Wiese
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | Emotion labor: Regulatory Strategies of Younger and Older Employees | ||||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||||
| Original title / Originaltitel | Emotionsarbeit: Regulationsstrategien und –kompetenzen jüngerer und älterer Erwerbstätiger | ||||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | The present project aims at investigating younger and older employees’ motivation and competencies in emotion labor. In most professional occupations, people need to regulate their emotions when dealing with co-workers or customers. Therefore, it is of great importance to know more about employees’ strategies and competencies in emotion regulation. In addition, due to demographic changes, the relative number of older employees in the active workforce will increase. Hence it is crucial to gain knowledge on the strengths and weaknesses of older employees. This project concentrates on two kinds of strategies: antecedent-focused and response-focused regulatory strategies. They have been discussed in the literature under the headings of ‘deep acting’ (i.e., creating authentic feelings within oneself via ognitive reappraisal) and ‘surface acting’ (i.e., acting as if one has a specific feeling). We argue that relying chiefly on surface acting rather might not only be less effective from the viewpoint of service quality but also detrimental to employees’ well-being. In addition, building on life-span psychological assumptions, we assume that both the motivation for and the competence of applying the strategy of cognitive reappraisal increase with age. We plan on collecting questionnaire and diary data that allow determining age-related differences in emotion regulation strategies as well as outcomes within a broad range of professions. In sum, the proposed research project will contribute to a better understanding of the interplay of emotion-related work affordances and employees’ behavior and experiences in different age groups by comparing the effectiveness and the possibly deleterious consequences of adhering to specific emotion regulation strategies in difficult employee-client interactions. | ||||
| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | emotion labor, aging workforce, emotion regulation | ||||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
Foundation |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Dec 2008 to May 2010 |