Stress Reactivity Influences the Relationship between Emotional Labor Strategies and Job Burnouts among Chinese Hospital Nurses

Extant studies mostly focused on the buffering role of social and external organizational resources and personal mental resources. However, there is no research exploring the moderating role of personal physiological resources (e.g., stress reactivity). The present study is aimed at examining the interactive effect of emotional labor and stress reactivity on job burnout. The present study utilized cortisol content in a 1 cm hair segment as the biomarker of total stress reactivity in one month. The participants were 229 female hospital nurses randomly recruited from city hospitals, China. They self-reported their emotional labor strategies and job burnout syndromes and provided 1 cm hair segments closest to the scalp two weeks later after the survey. Hair cortisol content was determined with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The results revealed that hair cortisol can moderate the associations of surface acting with emotional exhaustion and personal burnout; of deep acting with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal burnout; and of expression of naturally felt emotions with professional inefficacy. In particular, nurses with high cortisol levels not only showed higher emotional exhaustion than those with low cortisol levels under high surface acting but also showed lower emotional exhaustion under low surface acting. A similar situation was true for nurses' emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the context of deep acting. Nurses with low hair cortisol levels not only showed higher professional inefficacy than those with high hair cortisol levels under low expression of naturally felt emotions but also showed lower professional inefficacy under high expression of naturally felt emotions. Additionally, nurses with high hair cortisol levels showed lower personal burnout than those with low hair cortisol levels under low surface acting or high deep acting. In summary, the interaction pattern between stress reactivity and emotional labor was varied with the nature of emotional labor strategy and job burnout.