Emotion Regulation and Service-Related Attitudes: Connecting Customer Orientation and Service Organization Identification with Customer Interactions

In this study we examine the relationships of service organization identification and customer orientation as antecedents of emotion work strategies and fatigue. We hypothesize that identification and customer orientation (a) positively predict automatic emotion regulation and deep acting, (b) negatively predict surface acting and emotional deviance, and (c) negatively predict fatigue as mediated by the emotion regulation strategies used. We also hypothesized an interaction effect of identification and customer orientation on the use of emotion regulation strategies. In a diary study with 56 flight attendants, identification and customer orientation typically predicted the use of emotion regulation strategies as hypothesized, and the indirect effects on fatigue were found. There were also significant interaction effects of identification and customer orientation on emotion regulation strategies. The findings provide new perspectives on the antecedents of emotion regulation strategies, and they complement earlier research on high service quality strategies of emotion regulation in service work.

Pre-attentive processing of neutral and emotional sounds in congenital amusia

Congenital amusia is a life-long deficit of musical processing. This deficit can extend to the processing of language and in particular, emotional prosody. In a previous behavioral study, we revealed that while amusic individuals had difficulties in explicitly recognizing emotions for short vowels, they rated the emotional intensity of these same vowels as did their matched control participants. This finding led to the hypothesis that congenital amusics might be impaired for explicit emotional prosody recognition, but not for its implicit processing. With the aim to investigate amusics’ automatic processing of prosody, the present study measured electroencephalography (EEG) when participants listened passively to vowels presented within an oddball paradigm. Emotionally neutral vowel served as the standard and either emotional (anger and sadness) or neutral vowels as deviants. Evoked potentials were compared between participants with congenital amusia and control participants matched in age, education, and musical training. The MMN was rather preserved for all deviants in amusia, whereas an earlier negative component was found decreased in amplitude in amusics compared to controls for the neutral and sadness deviants. For the most salient deviant (anger), the P3a was decreased in amplitude for amusics compared to controls. These results showed some preserved automatic detection of emotional deviance in amusia despite an early deficit to process subtle acoustic changes. In addition, the automatic attentional shift in response to salient deviants at later processing stages was reduced in amusics in comparison to the controls. In the three ERPs related to the deviance, between-group differences were larger over bilateral prefrontal areas, previously shown to display functional impairments in congenital amusia. Our present study thus provides further understanding of the dichotomy between implicit and explicit processing in congenital amusia, in particular for vocal stimuli with emotional content.

Customer aggression, felt anger and emotional deviance: the moderating role of job autonomy

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine whether emotional deviance in response to customer aggression and employees’ feelings of anger is likely to be influenced by perceived job autonomy. To date, studies on emotional labor have focused primarily on emotional regulation strategies. Little is known about the factors that may serve to increase emotional deviance (i.e. situations in which felt and expressed emotions match but are at odds with organizational display rules). Design/methodology/approach – Three samples of service workers were recruited from northern Israel, and data were collected using self-reported questionnaires. Research hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analyses. Findings – Study 1 revealed that under conditions of frequent exposure to customer aggression, more perceived job autonomy was associated with more frequent instances of emotional deviance. The results of Study 2 and Study 3 demonstrated that the relationship between anger and emotional deviance was stronger for employees reporting high levels of perceived job autonomy. Practical implications – Given the potentially negative impact of emotional deviance on customer satisfaction, organizations should find a balance between satisfying employees’ desire for control and discretion and ensuring employee compliance with display rules. Originality/value – This study contributes to the existing literature by pointing out that job autonomy may have a “dark side”, in the sense that it provides employees with a certain level of perceived freedom, which might then be extended to include freedom from rule compliance, especially when negative emotions are experienced.