• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.338-344
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• 2015

Background: The present study aims to investigate job stressors and stress relievers for Korean emotional laborers, specifically focusing on the effects of work conditions and emotional labor properties. Emotional laborers are asked to hide or distort their real emotions in their interaction with clients. They are exposed to high levels of stress in the emotional labor process, which leads to serious mental health risks including burnout, depression, and even suicide impulse. Exploring job stressors and relieving factors would be the first step in seeking alternatives to protect emotional laborers from those mental health risks. Methods: Using the third wave data of Korean Working Conditions Survey, logistic regression analysis was conducted for two purposes: to examine the relations of emotional labor and stress, and to find out job stressors and relievers for emotional laborers. Results: The chances of stress arousal are 3.5 times higher for emotional laborers; emotional laborers experience double risk-burden for stress arousal. In addition to general job stressors, emotional laborers need to bear burdens related to emotional labor properties. The effect of social support at the workplace is not significant for stress relief, unlike common assumptions, whereas subjective satisfaction (wage satisfaction and work-life balance) is proven to have relieving effects on emotional laborers' job stress. Conclusion: From the results, the importance of a balanced understanding of emotional labor for establishing effective policies for emotional laborer protection is stressed.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.24-31
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• 2020

Objective : The purpose of our study was to investigate the relationship between job stress and depressive disorder among emotional laborers in a city. Methods : A total of 677 emotional laborers living in Jeonju-city participated in this study. The participants completed survey questions regarding demographic characteristics, job stress (using the Korean Occupational Stress Scale-24, KOSS-24), and depression (the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, PHQ-9). Logistic regression was performed to estimate the association between job stress and depression. Results : Our results indicated that 34.9% of the participants had a high risk of total job stress and 21.7% of participants had depression. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, female sex (OR=1.66, 95% CI=1.01-2.72) and total job stress (OR=3.84, 95% CI=2.57-5.75) were significantly associated with depression after adjusting for confounding factors. Among the subscales of job stress, job demand (OR=3.06, 95% CI=1.99-4.72) and occupational climate (OR=1.88, 95% CI=1.19-2.97) were significantly associated with depression. But insufficient job control, interpersonal conflict, job insecurity, the organizational system and lack of rewards were not. Conclusion : Among the emotional laborers, job stress, particularly job demand and occupational climate, were major contributing factors associated with depression. Early screening and preventive strategies focusing on job stress could reduce the impact of depression in emotional laborers.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.6071-6079
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of the emotional quotient of emotional laborers working in a social space on their vocational emotional satisfaction, including job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Research subjects were 58 registered nurses in care units at a University hospital located in K city of Korea and 48 Secondary schoolteachers. Data were collected from June 15 throughout June 22, 2014. Data were analyzed by SPSS 17.0 program, using statistical methods including Pearson's correlation coefficient and stepwise multiple regression. It was found that there was a significant correlation between emotional quotient of emotional laborers, vocational emotional satisfaction, job satisfaction, organizational commitment. That is, the higher the emotional quotient of emotional laborers, the better the vocational emotional satisfaction, job satisfaction and the organizational commitment was. It could be the baseline data for providing working conditions and efficient system of emotional laborer.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.269-276
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• 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate muscle pains of emotional laborers and determine whether there were differences in their muscle pains depending on the hours spent on emotional labor. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of the data collected from the 3rd (2011) Korean Working Conditions Survey. 50,032 participants responded to the study's questionnaire. Among them, 15,669 participants were emotional laborers who directly dealt with people such as customers, passengers, pupils, patients, etc. Results: Thirty three percent of subjects had reported muscle pains. Muscle pains of subjects were positively related to the hours spent on emotional labor (p<.001). According to the logistic regression analysis, the adjusted odd ratio of the subjects who spent about almost all of the work hours on emotional labor was 1.32 (95% CI: 1.15~1.52), compared to the subjects who spent about a quarter of their work hours on emotional labor, when other factors were controlled. Conclusion: The study's findings indicate that engaging in emotional labor for longer hours increases the risks of muscle pains. Occupational nurses must pay closer attention to the management of muscle pains of emotional laborers.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.216-223
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• 2018

Background: Many studies have reported negative psychological or physical effects of emotional labor. Relationship between work-related musculoskeletal disorder and psychosocial factors has been reported. To manage organizational and psychosocial factors of musculoskeletal disorder with work place intervention among emotional laborers, the factors contributing to musculoskeletal pain must be identified and clarified. Methods: Data from the fourth Korean Working Conditions Survey was analyzed. Based on the questionnaire, we selected emotional laborers and included 3,979 participants, excluding participants whose variables were of interest to the researcher. Weight variable was applied. The association with musculoskeletal pain and psychosocial factors, such as workload, monotonous work, job control, social support, and job satisfaction, was investigated. Results: Univariate analysis demonstrated that there was a statistically significant relationship between social support, job satisfaction, and musculoskeletal pain. In multivariate analysis, job satisfaction showed a strong correlation with musculoskeletal pain at all sites. Social support was significantly associated with backache. Monotonous work seemed to reduce the pain in the neck and/or upper limbs. Job control and work intensity were not significantly associated with musculoskeletal pain. Conclusion: In this study, job satisfaction was significantly associated with musculoskeletal pain, and social support among the social psychological stressors could reduce musculoskeletal pain. However, unlike previously known, the presence of monotonous work resulted in reduced musculoskeletal pain. The results of this study will help to establish the direction of improvement of atmosphere in the workplace to prevent the musculoskeletal pain of emotional laborers.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.87-108
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• 2014

Recent examples of abuse by black consumers (including air travellers) against emotional laborers have become a serious social issue in Korea in that they are likely to violate human rights of those laborers. Emotional labor is a form of emotion regulation that creates a publicly visible facial and bodily display, and also emotional management within the workforce that creates a situation in which the emotion management by workers can be exchanged in the marketplace. Example professions that require emotional labor are: nurses, doctors, waiting staff, and television actors. However, as the economy moves from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, many more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands when compared to the past. One of symptoms deriving from emotional labor is smile mask syndrome abbreviated SMS, which is a psychological disorder proposed by professor Makoto Natsume where subjects develop depression and physical illness as a result of prolonged, unnatural smiling. And higher degree of using emotion regulation on the job is related to higher levels of employees' emotional exhaustion, and lower levels of employees' job satisfaction. In most part, emotional laborers are more abused and hurt by so called black consumers who are raising complaints relating to products and services purchased against service providers for the purpose of maliciously getting compensation. Against this background, the Korean Government abolished "the Consumer Protection Act" and instead promulgated "the Basic Consumer Act" in September 2006 which stipulates that consumers are expected to have protection as well as responsibility and duty. The Aviation Security Act cites the examples of prohibited behaviors (unruly passengers) while they are travelling. In addition, human rights of emotional laborers could be more protected by the enhancement of etiquettes and cavalry and improvement of culture and working environment.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.45-56
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• 2019

The regulation of emotion is known to mediate the relationship between emotion-relevant differences in individuals and their life outcomes. This study attempted to include a situational factor in addition to the mediation model and investigated whether this conditional component changed the patterns of indirect effects. The researchers recruited 180 emotional laborers working in diverse domains and used a questionnaire to ascertain their negative affectivity, cognitive reappraisal, emotional exhaustion, and the intensity of negative comments they usually received from customers. The results of the conditional indirect effect analysis revealed the positive indirect influence of negative affectivity on emotional exhaustion through cognitive reappraisal when emotional labors receive highly negative comments from customers (high intensity of the situation). Similarly, negative indirect effects were found when emotional labors receive slightly negative comments from customers (low intensity of the situation). The outcomes of this study suggest that cognitive reappraisal can mediate to decrease emotional exhaustion in contexts that arouse more intensive negative emotions; it can also mediate to increase emotional exhaustion in contexts that arouse less intensive negative emotions. The implications of this study include the importance of integrating individual differences with situational factors. The study also provides information about the distinctiveness of groups of emotional laborers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.39-57
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• 2015

Ever since Hochschild (1983) introduced the concept of emotional labor in the workplace, it has constantly interested researchers due to its impact on employees' well-being as well as organizational outcomes. However, a thorough understanding of emotional labor and its relationship with various outcomes in sales people is not yet realized. In a systemic approach to the concept using quantitative methods is still necessary. The present study treats emotional labor as two factors (e.g. emotive dissonance and emotive effort). The psychological and behavioral outcomes of each sub-construct of emotional labor are investigated within a parsimonious framework. The findings suggest that emotional dissonance affected job satisfaction, while emotive effort had a significant influence on emotional exhaustion and job performance.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-85
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• 2008

This study is based on an empirical study on consequences of emotions and emotional labor in the food-service industry. It analyzed the effect of emotional labor on emotions of emotional laborers and the effect of emotional labor on communication skills. Data used for analysis were collected through the questionnaire surveyed on the various samples including employees of family restaurants, Korean restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Japanese restaurants, etc. The result of data analysis indicated that only the efforts for emotional expressions among the factors influenced affirmative emotion(P-value=0.042). It also showed that the factor of the efforts for emotional expressions by researchers had a positive effect on both language communication skills and non-language communication skills(P-value=0.000). This study was valuable in the aspect that emotions and communication skills were first selected as dependent variables of emotional labor and it verified causality between emotional labor and these variables. However, it also has some limitations that its sample size was small and it depended on convenience sampling.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.63-76
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• 2022

Emotional labor, characterized by a dysfunctional type of emotional regulation called surface acting, has detrimental psychological consequences on employees, including depression and social anxiety. Because such disorders exhibit psychological characteristics manifested through brain activation, previous studies have succeeded in distinguishing individuals with depression and social anxiety from healthy controls using their functional connectivity characteristics. However, it has not been established whether the functional connectivity characteristics associated with emotional labor are distinguishable. Thus, we obtained resting-state fMRI data from participants in the emotion labor (EL) group and control (CTRL) group, and we subjected their whole-brain functional connectivity matrices to a linear support vector machine classifier. Our analysis revealed that the EL and CTRL groups could be successfully distinguished on the basis of individuals' connectivity patterns, and confidence in the classification was correlated with the scores on the depression and social anxiety scales. These results are expected to provide insight on the neurobiological characteristics of emotional labor and enable the sorting of employees undergoing adverse emotional labor utilizing neurobiological observations.