The Effect of Perceived Social Support on Emotional Labor Mediated by Psychological Hardiness

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Soheil Sarshar ¹
• Zohreh Rafezi ²
• elham saei ³
• Rasoul Rostami Malkhalifeh ¹

¹ M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Allameh Tabataba'i University of Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor in Psychology, Allameh Tabataba'i University of Tehran, Iran

³ Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Shahid Chamran University, Ahwaz, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/tmj.2021.31079.0

Abstract

1-INTRODUCTION
Today, researchers are trying to understand the process of emotional labor. emotional labor has three components: emotional requirements, emotional regulation, and emotional performance. emotional requirements include the goal of integration in showing positive emotions and hiding negative emotions. emotional regulation is the effort of employees to adapt to the job's emotional-social demands, which has two strategies of surface action and deep action. surface action involves the artificiality of the emotions requested. deep action, on the other side, is trying to experience and feel the real thrill. emotional performance means the visible expression of emotional management.
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Emotional labor, from the perspective of action theory, includes surface action and deep action. social support is conceptualized as an individual's cognitive assessment of the support environment or workgroup. social protection theorists believe that social protection focuses on the cognitive assessments of individuals in their immediate environment and the degree of confidence in support. therefore, we can assume that social support increases a person's psychological capacity in the face of emotional needs by creating psychological hardiness. thus, perceived social support is related to the personality and cognitive variables of psychological hardiness. hardiness is a set of feedback and skills that build the courage to face stressful life situations. hardiness has a significant impact on how emotional needs are managed and interpreted. based on the above, a model was proposed including the following variables: social support as a predictor, surface and deep action as outcomes, and psychological hardiness as a mediator.
3- METHODOLOGY
The current study is a correlation study that uses structural equation modeling as the analysis strategy. the statistical population of the study includes nurses of public hospitals in khorramabad. a sample size of 224 (125 females and 81 males) was selected by conducting a multi-stage random sampling method. the data gathering tool was a written questionnaire.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The results of structural equation modeling indicated the direct coefficient of perceived social support on psychological hardiness (B = 0.148, p = 0.001), perceived social support on surface action (B = -0.134, p = 0.001), perceived social support on deep action (B = 0.40, p = 0.001), psychological hardiness on surface action (B = 0.137, p = 0.001), and psychological hardness on deep action (B = 0.143, p = 0.001). All the direct effects were significant and corresponding hypotheses were confirmed. The mediating role of psychological hardiness in the relationship between social support and emotional labor was evaluated through the bootstrapping method and confirmed.
5-CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
The results of the present study showed that the predictor variables explain 22 percent of the variance of deep action. the present study also confirmed the negative impact of perceived social support and psychological hardiness on superficial action. social support includes care and support, which empowers people to adapt to working conditions. considering the fact that emotional labor aims to emotionally adapt to the situation, social support can lead to improved emotional labor. people with psychological hardiness can easily manage emotionally demanding jobs. by flexing their flexibility and receptivity, they coordinate uncoordinated events and evaluate them appropriately. the flexibility of these people can also increase their work mastery by challenging the difficulty of the work. people with high stubbornness feel more empowered to control the events of their lives. therefore, they manage the requirements of job excitement in a more dominant way. finally, according to the emotion regulation model, it can be said that social support is a kind of adaptation that equips people with flexibility and acceptance of working conditions. therefore, by increasing the commitment and flexibility of people in difficult situations, managers can make them more efficient in handling job emotions.

Keywords

• Emotional labor
• Perceived social support
• Psychological hardiness

References

 

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