Emotional Labour, Emotional Intelligence, and Psychological Distress

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore (1) whether employees differing in emotional intelligence level would differ in their emotional labour styles and (2) whether these styles would mediate the impact of emotional labour on psychological distress. To test the relationships, data was collected from employees of three public sector organizations situated in Quetta, Pakistan. After establishing the psychometric properties of the scales hypotheses were tested through Partial Least Squares (PLS) path modelling algorithm. The results of this study indicated that (a) emotional intelligence was positively and significantly related to deep acting; (b) surface acting was positively and significantly related to psychological distress, and; (c) neither surface acting nor deep acting mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and psychological distress.