Exercise is important to employees’ health and well-being. Exercise has been found to increase resources, foster resource replenishment, and increase happiness, which may make it effective in supporting employees against the harmful effects of depletion that arise from emotion regulation. Surface acting is a demanding behavior in which employees must fake their emotions to follow organizational display rules, but we know little about how exercise breaks can prevent harmful effects extending from this common job demand in some organizational settings (e.g., customer service). Fifty participants (N = 50) completed a surface acting task in which they listened to audio-recorded negative restaurant reviews and were instructed to respond to the reviews without conveying negative emotions across a 90-minute in-lab experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four break conditions (no break, a passive break, an exercise break, or a flaw essay break) which occurred halfway through the experimental session. Participants then completed the surface acting task again for 20 minutes. The surface acting task was effective in inducing emotion regulation. Participants who received a break experienced a decrease in depletion after the break, while participants who did not receive a break experienced an increase in depletion. However, no evidence was obtained to suggest that exercise breaks led to a reduction in depletion relative to other experimental conditions, nor a difference in mastery or positive affect. This thesis contributes to research on emotion regulation and exercise break by creating a new surface acting task that can easily be given in experiments. Also, this thesis suggests that organizations should ensure that employees are receiving breaks during worktime to guarantee employees maintain high productivity. / M.S. / Work is stressful as individuals may need to enhance, change, fake or suppress emotions through a process known as emotion regulation. One type of emotion regulation is surface acting in which individuals fake emotions to better align with organizational display rules. Surface acting has been found to contribute to emotional exhaustion, work-to-family conflict, feelings of inauthenticity and insomnia. Surface acting is common in customer jobs in which employees need to address customer concerns. Research has demonstrated that breaks can be used to help restore resources and reduce depletion. Specifically, exercise has been found to be beneficial in helping employees combat the harmful effects of emotion regulation and the depletion that comes with it. In this study, fifty participants completed a surface acting task in which they listened to audio-recorded negative restaurant reviews and were instructed to respond to the reviews without conveying negative emotions across a 90-minute in-lab experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four break conditions (no break, a passive break, an exercise break, or a flaw essay break) which occurred halfway through the experimental session. Participants then completed the surface acting task again for 20 minutes. The surface acting task was found to induce emotion regulation. Participants who received a break experienced a decrease in depletion after the break, while participants who did not receive a break experienced an increase in depletion. There was no evidence to suggest that exercise breaks were better at reducing depletion than the other conditions. This thesis suggests that organizations should ensure that employees are receiving breaks during worktime to guarantee employees maintain high productivity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/100740 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Rost, Emily A. |
| Contributors | Psychology, Calderwood, Charles, Hauenstein, Neil M. A., Axsom, Danny K. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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