Citation

Wang Z, Jex SM, Peng Y, Liu L, Wang S. J. Occup. Health Psychol. 2019; 24(4): 467-481.

Affiliation

School of Psychology.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/ocp0000150

PMID

30945923

Abstract

When interacting with supervisors, employees often engage in emotion regulation (i.e., surface acting and deep acting), and the consequences may extend beyond work boundaries. Based on the spillover-crossover model and the strength model of self-control, we examined the relationship between employee emotion regulation during supervisory interactions and marital well-being (i.e., spouse's perceived marriage quality and satisfaction). Two survey studies using Chinese employee-spouse dyads showed that employees' surface acting was positively related to ego depletion. Surface acting was found to be negatively related to spouses' perceived marital well-being through the serial mediating roles of both ego depletion and social undermining behavior. Moreover, leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship quality moderated the association between surface acting and ego depletion such that the relationship was weaker for employees with a high-quality LMX relationship compared with those with a low-quality LMX relationship. These findings extend theory and research on emotion regulation to employee-leader interactions and contribute to future research and theory-building on emotion regulation, leadership, and work-family integration. Practical implications for leaders, organizations, and employees were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en