More Than One Strategy: A Closer Examination of the Relationship Between Deep Acting and Key Employee Outcomes

The relationship between emotional labor strategies (i.e., deep acting and surface acting) and employee outcomes has been often studied. Yet, although the impact of surface acting on employee well-being is clear, findings regarding deep acting have been inconsistent. In the present study, we propose that this may be explained by the multidimensional nature of deep acting, which subsumes different specific emotion regulation strategies. With a 5-day diary study, we investigated the links between subtypes of deep acting (i.e., cognitive change and attentional deployment) and key employee outcomes (i.e., mental fatigue, self-authenticity, and rewarding interactions) in a sample of 244 employees. Multilevel analyses confirmed that different emotion regulation strategies underlying deep acting were differentially related to employee outcomes, which may explain the mixed results of previous research examining deep acting as a uniform construct. Theoretical and practical implications of considering specific emotion regulation strategies underlying deep acting are discussed.