“Hide your sickness and put on a happy face”: The effects of supervision distrust, surface acting, and sickness surface acting on hotel employees' emotional exhaustion

Abstract

The study of emotional labor and sickness presenteeism in the hotel industry is crucial due to the current context of economic uncertainty and to a climate of insecurity that forces employees to continue to show up for work even despite being sick. This research aimed to explore the effect of supervision distrust as an antecedent of surface acting on hotel service employees' emotional exhaustion levels. Sickness surface acting-the voluntary effort to suppress illness symptoms or to fake a healthy health status-was introduced as a new construct to explain the relation between a perception of supervision distrust and emotional exhaustion. A total of 166 employees from Portuguese hotels completed a five-day diary survey.From these, 58 reported working while ill. The results showed that surface acting mediated the relationship between emotional exhaustion and supervision distrust.Further analysis with a subsample of 58 employees who reported frequency of sickness presenteeism revealed that for sick employees, sickness surface acting mediated the relationship between supervision distrust perception and emotional exhaustion.These findings bring the sickness surface acting construct to the sickness presenteeism literature, and highlight the importance of creating policies to reduce and manage the negative consequences of supervision distrust -a factor capable of promoting attendance and sickness presenteeism behaviors. They also inform human resources managers of the negative impacts of "service with a smile" and sickness presenteeism in the hotel industry.

The Effect of Emotional Labor on Psychological Well-Being in the Context of South Korean Firefighters: The Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership

“…Moreover, firefighters engaging in surface acting frequently experience emotional dissonance—a discrepancy between internal feelings and external expressions—which progressively drains their cognitive and motivational resources [ 36 ]. This depletion amplifies psychosocial risks such as burnout, exhaustion, and cynicism, escalating job stress [ 37 ]. In contrast, deep acting, characterized by the alignment of one’s emotions with those favored by the organization, is hypothesized to reduce psychological well-being.…”

Promoting Sustainable Development of Organizations: Performance Pressure, Workplace Fun, and Employee Ambidextrous Innovation

“…The impact of performance pressure on employees is complex. When employees are under significant pressure, it can cause long-term negative effects, such as deteriorating personal health and psychological conditions [35], weakening happiness [36], and employees themselves developing anxiety about the workplace [37]. This leads to a series of negative behaviors such as dishonesty, impoliteness, and deception [37,38].…”

Sick and working: Current challenges and emerging directions for future presenteeism research

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