Purpose: This study investigated relationships between hospice nurses' emotional labor, life satisfaction, and affective commitment (moderator). We started with the assumption that displaying real emotions rather than faking them may increase life satisfaction.
Design and methods: The study utilized a cross-sectional survey data analysis. A total of 322 nurses participated in the study. Hayes' process examined the moderation relationship predicting emotional labor and life satisfaction.
Findings: The results showed that emotional labor partially affected life satisfaction. However, those effects varied at different levels of affective commitment and interestingly diminished at a high level.
Practice implications: Nurse leaders should understand and transform the surface emotional setting of nurses to more profound acting emotions and then to natural emotional responses, which otherwise can generate emotional conflict causing unsatisfactory life.
Keywords: affective commitment; emotional labor (surface acting, deep acting, expression of natural felt emotions); life Satisfaction.
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