Poker faced professions more taxing on emotions
By IANSWednesday, January 12, 2011
WASHINGTON - Professions demanding a neutral expression can be more taxing on employees’ emotions.
Consequently, such employees have less energy to devote to the required tasks, says a new research from Rice, Toronto and Purdue Universities.
Researchers found that such employees suppress emotions more than workers in other service-oriented jobs, which are required to be more positive, the Journal of Applied Psychology reports.
Journalists, social workers, lawyers and law enforcement officers avoid appearing either overly positive or negative as required by their professions, according to a Rice University statement in the US.
“Our study shows that emotion suppression takes a toll on people,” said Daniel Beal, study co-author and assistant professor of psychology at Rice University.
“It takes energy to suppress emotions, so it’s not surprising that workers who must remain neutral are often more rundown or show greater levels of burnout.
“The more energy you spend controlling your emotions, the less energy you have to devote to the task at hand.”
Beal and his co-authors, John Trougakos of the University of Toronto and Christine Jackson of Purdue, found that employees will generally engage in higher levels of suppression in an attempt to adhere to the neutral display requirement.
Another consequence that the researchers noticed was that customers who interacted with a neutrally expressive employee, gave lower ratings of service quality toward that employee’s organization.
