The role of emotional dissonance in the workplace : associations with burnout and job satisfaction among Chinese human service

Recently, the important role of emotions in the workplace is gaining increasing attention (Briner, 1999). One popular research agenda is to investigate how emotional dissonance influences the psychological well-being of service providers. According to Rafaeli and Sutton (1987), emotional dissonance occurs when there is incongruence between employees' felt emotion and organizational display rules. Past studies generally show that emotional dissonance relates significantly with negative health and job outcomes, including burnout, psychological distress and job dissatisfaction. However, available studies were conducted in Western cultures, particularly with American and Western European populations. There is a paucity of relevant study conducted with Chinese work samples. Recent studies (e.g., Markus and Kitayama, 1991) suggested that there may be cross-cultural differences in emotional expression, with Chinese being more restrained in expressing their emotions while Westerners are more likely to overtly display their emotions (Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier, 2002). Thus, it remains unclear how findings of emotional dissonance can be extended to Chinese workers. In order to fill this gap, we conducted this study to investigate how emotional dissonance influenced job burnout and satisfaction among Chinese human service professionals in Hong Kong.