Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
Free To Be You and Me: A Climate of Authenticity
Alleviates Burnout From Emotional Labor
Alicia Grandey, Su Chuen Foo, Markus Groth, and Robyn E. Goodwin
Online First Publication, August 29, 2011. doi: 10.1037/a0025102
CITATION
Grandey, A., Foo, S. C., Groth, M., & Goodwin, R. E. (2011, August 29). Free To Be You and
Me: A Climate of Authenticity Alleviates Burnout From Emotional Labor. Journal of
Occupational Health Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0025102

Free To Be You and Me: A Climate of Authenticity Alleviates
Burnout From Emotional Labor
Alicia Grandey and Su Chuen Foo
Pennsylvania State University
Markus Groth and Robyn E. Goodwin
University of New South Wales
Given the emotional nature of health care, patients and their families may express anger and
mistreat their health care providers; in addition, those providers are expected to manage their own
emotions when providing care—two interpersonal stressors that are linked to job burnout.
Integrating conservation of resources (Hobfoll, 2002) and ego depletion (Muraven & Baumeister,
2000) theories, we propose that this creates a resource loss spiral that can be slowed by the
presence of a “climate of authenticity” among one’s coworkers. We describe this climate and how
it differs from other work climates. We then propose that a work unit with a climate of
authenticity should provide a self-regulatory break from emotional labor with patients, thus
replenishing resources and buffering against strain from emotional labor. We tested this multi-
level prediction by surveying 359 health care providers nested within 48 work units at a large,
metropolitan hospital. We find that medical workers experiencing more mistreatment by patients
are more likely to be managing emotions with patients, and this response further contributes to
the employees’ job-related burnout. As predicted, managing emotions with patients was unrelated
to burnout for workers in a unit with a climate of authenticity.
Keywords: authenticity, emotion regulation, emotional labor, health care, burnout, mistreatment,
work climate
Job burnout is a state of exhaustion and emotional
depletion that is unhealthy for the employee and is
linked to absenteeism, turnover, and lower job perfor-
mance (Grandey, Dickter, & Sin, 2004; Halbesleben &
Bowler, 2007; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). Moreover,
these outcomes are particularly problematic for health
care professionals, where absence and decreased job
performance can harm patient health as well (Le Blanc,
Hox, Schaufeli, & Taris, 2007). Two socioemotional
factors have been identified as sources of burnout for
health care professionals. First, patients and their family
members are often dealing with disease, discomfort, or
even death, and they may be unable to regulate their
expressions of fear or anger when interacting with
health care providers due to fatigue or stress (Demer-
outi, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001; Leiter &
Maslach, 1988; Maslach, 1978). Such negative emo-
tional behavior by patients and their families is a pre-
dictor of care provider burnout (Bakker & Heuven,
2006; Bakker, Schaufeli, Sixma, Bosveld, & Van
Dierendonck, 2000). Second, in addition to accurate
diagnoses and safe, efficient treatment, health care pro-
fessionals are expected to provide good customer ser-
vice to patients (Drach-Zahavy, 2010), often requiring
emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983). Such emotional
labor in health care entails showing interest, concern,
and sympathy, while suppressing disgust, frustration, or
anxiety, when interacting with the public (Mann, 2005).
This underappreciated form of labor has been linked to
job stress and burnout (Bono & Vey, 2005; Henderson,
2001). Thus, for health care providers, burnout may be
a function of: 1) being the target of customers’ negative
emotions, and 2) regulating one’s own emotional ex-
pression. Though these predictors are clearly linked,
they are nevertheless rarely considered together when
examining job burnout (see Sliter, Jex, Wolford, &
McInnerney, 2010 for a recent exception).
A stream of research has begun to identify per-
sonal and situational factors that moderate the burn-
out from these socioemotional demands. Most work
has focused on individual perceptions of one’s re-
Alicia Grandey and Su Chuen Foo, Department of Psychol-
ogy, Pennsylvania State University; Markus Groth and
Robyn E. Goodwin, Australian School of Business, Univer-
sity of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Aus-
tralia.
We thank editor Joseph Hurrell for constructive reviews.
This research was funded by a grant of the Australian
Research Council (LP0990427). An earlier version of the
paper was presented at the 26th annual meeting of the
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in
Chicago, Illinois, April 2011.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Alicia Grandey, Pennsylvania State University,
111 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16803. E-mail:
Aag6@Psu.edu
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
2011, Vol. ●, No. ●, 000–000
© 2011 American Psychological Association
1076-8998/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0025102
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