Following Display Rules in Good or Bad Faith?:
Customer Orientation as a Moderator of the Display
Rule-Emotional Labor Relationship
Joseph A. Allen and S. Douglas Pugh
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Alicia A. Grandey
Pennsylvania State University
Markus Groth
University of New South Wales
Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with em-
ployee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking ex-
pressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational per-
spective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly
and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than
500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find
that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of
display rules with “bad faith” acting.
A cashier smiles and pleasantly greets a customer as he approaches checkout. This smile may re-
flect the cashier’s true feelings or may have little to do with how he or she feels. That is because the
smile may be a required part of the job. Managing emotions for pay is called emotional labor
(Hochschild, 1983) and involves faking, suppressing, and enhancing emotions to provide a partic-
ular emotional expression for organizational goals (Grandey, 2000). Employees are more likely to
engage in emotional labor when there are organizational display rules that specify which emotions
are appropriate to display to customers, such as “service with a smile” (Ashforth & Humphrey,
1993; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Pugh, 2001). Display rules make it more likely that employees’
observable displays will comply with the rules (Diefendorff & Croyle, 2008; Diefendorff & Rich-
ard, 2003; Goldberg & Grandey, 2007); however, how employees regulate their emotions in re-
sponse to these rules, and thus the quality of the display, is less clear.
In the more than two decades since Hochschild (1983) proposed the concept of emotional la-
bor, much attention has been given to the distinction between surface acting (i.e., modifying ex-
Human Performance, 23:101–115, 2010
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0895-9285 print/1532-7043 online
DOI: 10.1080/08959281003621695
Correspondence should be sent to Joseph Allen, Organizational Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223. E-mail: jalle114@uncc.edu

pressions) and deep acting (i.e., modifying feelings). In field and experimental research, surface
acting is linked to lower authenticity and performance ratings, whereas deep acting has more posi-
tive effects (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Diefendorff, Croyle, & Gosserand, 2005; Goldberg &
Grandey, 2007; Grandey, 2003; Grandey, Fisk, Mattila, Jansen, & Sideman, 2005; Hennig-
Thurau, Groth, Paul, & Gremmler, 2006). These findings are consistent with early references to
surface acting as faking in “bad faith” or deep acting as “faking in good faith” (Rafaeli & Sutton,
1987). So an important question is, when do display rules make employees respond by faking
emotions, or with deeper-level regulation? Evidence has shown mixed relationships, suggesting
we need to consider moderators of these relationships; in particular, we propose that individual
differences in motivational tendencies with customers is a particularly fruitful direction.
Previous literature in emotional labor has not paid much attention to individual motivational ten-
dencies. Recent work has argued that goal-driven motivational processes (e.g., control theory) and
traits (e.g., the “Big 5”) play an important role in how employees regulate emotions at work
(Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003; Gosserand & Diefendorff, 2005). We argue that a more specific type
of trait—customer service orientation—may provide insight regarding who fakes or “brings forth”
emotions with customers in response to display rules. Customer orientation (CO) represents an indi-
vidual difference directly related to the job context (Brown, Mowen, Donavan, & Licata, 2002; Ones,
Viswesvaran, & Dilchert, 2005) useful for selecting individuals for service-related positions. Thus,
customer service orientation is an “actionable” type of motivational tendency that can be used for se-
lection purposes if management determines that it is relevant to valued and job-specific outcomes.
We draw on the control theory concept of display rules as a goal and emotion regulation as a re-
sponse to the goal (Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003), integrating the well-established customer
service orientation literature (Hogan, Hogan, & Busch, 1984) with these ideas. Thus, we contrib-
ute to theory building by more explicitly linking concepts from the emotional labor and customer
service literatures. Empirically, we provide unique evidence to better understand the link of dis-
play rules and emotional labor with a large sample of employees in customer contact positions.
Finally, we propose practical implications for selection by providing evidence for whether this in-
dividual difference contributes the relationships between display rules and “good faith” or “bad
faith” acting with customers.
DISPLAY RULES AS GOALS OF EMOTIONAL LABOR
Service workers represent the organization and may be the only contact the customer has with the
organization (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002; Ryan & Ployhart, 2003). These face-to-face encoun-
ters involve the exchange of intangibles such as courtesy, responsiveness, and friendliness
(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985). As such, employees’ expressed emotions can leave a
lasting impression upon the customer, resulting in perceptions of service quality and encounter at-
titudes (Barger & Grandey, 2005; Pugh, 2001), which are linked to the bottom-line profits
(Schneider, Ehrhart, Mayer, Saltz, & Niles-Jolly, 2005). To systematically encourage and moti-
vate these valuable behaviors in service encounters, organizations communicate display rules
concerning the emotions that employees express to customers via their selection, training, and re-
ward procedures (Leidner, 1999; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989).
Display rules, broadly speaking, are standards that indicate which emotional expressions are
appropriate for the situation (Ekman, 1973). In organizational settings, display rules are more ex-
102 ALLEN, PUGH, GRANDEY, GROTH