Willing and Able to Fake Emotions: A Closer Examination of the Link
Between Emotional Dissonance and Employee Well-Being
S. Douglas Pugh
Virginia Commonwealth University
Markus Groth
The University of New South Wales
Thorsten Hennig-Thurau
University of Muenster
Emotional dissonance resulting from an employee’s emotional labor is usually considered to lead to
negative employee outcomes, such as job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Drawing on Fest-
inger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, we argue that the relationship between service employees’
surface acting and job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion is moderated by 2 aspects of a service
worker’s self-concept: the importance of displaying authentic emotions (reflecting the self-concept’s
self-liking dimension) and the employee’s self-efficacy when faking emotions (reflecting the self-
competence dimension). A survey of 528 frontline employees from a wide variety of service jobs
provides support for the moderating role of both self-concept dimensions, which moderate 3 out of 4
relationships. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed from the perspectives of cognitive
dissonance and emotional labor theories.
Keywords: emotional labor, self-concept, self-competence, dissonance, surface acting
The management of felt and displayed emotions is an important
aspect of many employees’ jobs, particularly in service industries
where the expression of positive emotions is an expected part of
service delivery. In her seminal book, The Managed Heart, soci-
ologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) termed this type of work emo-
tional labor and defined it as the “management of feeling to create
a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (p. 7). Hochschild
was not only the first scholar to explicitly identify the management
and display of emotions as part of the work role, but she also
asserted that emotional labor is a stressor that is detrimental to the
psychological and physical well-being of employees. Specifically,
her findings suggested that the need to manage emotions in the
service of organizational display rules can create a discrepancy
between the emotions an employee feels and the emotions he or
she displays when serving a customer. This discrepancy, referred
to as emotional dissonance, has been argued to be a source of
strain that threatens employee well-being (Grandey, 2000; Hoch-
schild, 1983; Morris & Feldman, 1997).
Although there is general support for the relationship between
emotional labor and employee strain, there is some inconsistency in
these findings (Bono & Vey, 2005; Coˆte´, 2005). For example,
Wharton (1993, 1996) initially found a positive relationship between
emotional labor and employee satisfaction. Although subsequent re-
search examining different types of emotional labor strategies tends to
support the idea that expressing emotions that one does not feel leads
to more detrimental well-being outcomes (e.g., Grandey, 2003; Judge,
Woolf, & Hurst, 2009), some studies of emotional labor have also
shown links to positive outcomes, such as higher personal accom-
plishment (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002) and job satisfaction (Yang
& Chang, 2008). Moreover, Coˆte´ (2005) concluded that there are no
consistent differences in self-reported strain between employees in
people work jobs (which usually require emotional labor as part of the
work role) and employees in other jobs. Coˆte´ observed that the
understanding of the mechanisms linking emotional labor and strain is
limited. We agree and argue that one reason for contradictory findings
is the inconsistent conceptualization of the emotional dissonance
construct in emotional labor research.
Consequently, the purpose of this study was to critically exam-
ine the link between emotional dissonance and employee well-
being by drawing on a conceptualization of emotional dissonance
that is more closely tied theoretically to research on cognitive
dissonance (Festinger, 1957). We propose that emotional disso-
nance resulting from employee surface acting—the act of display-
ing emotions that are not actually felt—has effects that are con-
tingent on the negative implications dissonance may have for an
employee’s self-concept. Specifically, we examine two theoreti-
cally relevant facets of a service worker’s self-concept, each of
which reflects a dimension of the self-concept construct: impor-
tance of authentic emotional displays (reflecting an employee’s
self-liking) and self-efficacy for surface acting (reflecting the
employee’s self-competence). We propose that both function as
moderators of the link between emotional dissonance and em-
This article was published Online First November 8, 2010.
S. Douglas Pugh, Department of Management, Virginia Commonwealth
University; Markus Groth, School of Organisation and Management, The
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Thorsten Hennig-
Thurau, Muenster School of Business and Economics, University of Muen-
ster, Muenster, Germany.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to S.
Douglas Pugh, Department of Management, Virginia Commonwealth Uni-
versity, 301 West Main Street, P.O. Box 844000, Richmond, VA 23284-
4000. E-mail: sdpugh@vcu.edu
Journal of Applied Psychology © 2010 American Psychological Association
2011, Vol. 96, No. 2, 377–390 0021-9010/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0021395
377

ployee well-being. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 528
frontline service employees in customer-facing jobs.
Theoretical Perspectives on Emotional Dissonance
Surface Acting and Emotional Dissonance
Emotional dissonance is a discrepancy between felt and ex-
pressed emotion “analogous to the concept of cognitive disso-
nance” (Hochschild, 1983, p. 90). This discrepancy arises when
the emotions employees display as part of their job performance do
not match the emotions they feel. Drawing on the analogy with
cognitive dissonance theory, Hochschild (1983) asserted that when
felt emotions differ from expressed emotions, tension results. The
tension is due to estrangement from the self and feelings of
inauthenticity. Expressing emotions that are different from the
emotions that are felt, according to Hochschild, “poses a challenge
to a person’s sense of self” (p. 136).
This perspective has been a dominant theoretical orientation in
much research on emotional labor. Indeed, Erickson and Ritter (2001)
noted that because of Hochschild’s influence, “most studies of emo-
tion management processes begin with the assumption that perform-
ing emotional labor is associated with negative mental health out-
comes” (p. 148). Morris and Feldman (1997), for example, referred to
the negative effects of emotional labor as stemming from alienation or
estrangement from true feelings. Other work described emotional
labor as “threatening one’s self of authentic selfhood in that it requires
workers to evoke certain types of emotions while suppressing others”
(Erickson & Ritter, 2001, p. 148). Erickson and Ritter asserted that
hiding feelings of anger harms employee well-being because it re-
minds employees of their lack of control over their own emotions.
Similarly, Simpson and Stroh (2004) argued that emotional disso-
nance creates feelings of inauthenticity within employees, particularly
women, because the display of unfelt emotions contradicts “a social
identity linked to forthright and open communication of emotional
states” (p. 717). The common, albeit often unstated, assumption in this
research is that employees have a meta-cognitive awareness of the
discrepancy between felt and expressed emotions and are distressed
about the discrepancy.
Most empirical research on emotional labor has focused on surface
and deep acting as two emotional labor strategies commonly used by
employees to meet display expectations (Grandey, 2003). Surface
acting is the act of displaying emotions that are not felt. This is
contrasted with deep acting, where an employee consciously modifies
felt emotions to produce the required emotional displays (Grandey,
2000; Hochschild, 1983). Whereas deep acting leads to a display of
genuinely felt emotions, regulating emotional displays through sur-
face acting is widely considered to be the more detrimental emotional
labor strategy because it produces a mismatch between felt and
displayed emotions and has been associated with a wide range of
negative outcomes, including lower job satisfaction, higher levels of
burnout, and intentions to quit (Brotheridge &Grandey, 2002; Coˆte´ &
Morgan, 2002; Grandey, 2003; Grandey, Fisk, & Steiner, 2005;
Heuven &Bakker, 2003;Morris & Feldman, 1997). Thus, a dominant
theme in the literature is that surface acting is detrimental because it
produces emotional dissonance, which is distressing because it con-
flicts with employees’ self-concepts.
The primary purpose of this article is to contribute to theories on
emotional labor by critically examining the role of employees’ self-
concept on the relationship between surface acting and employee
well-being. We argue that scholars have paid little attention to the
links between emotional dissonance and the body of research on
cognitive dissonance from which Hochschild drew her inspiration.
We examine the role of the self in the cognitive dissonance literature
and, on the basis of theoretical and empirical insights, formulate and
test hypotheses about its role in emotional labor processes.
Cognitive Dissonance and Emotional Dissonance
Hochschild (1983) proposed emotional dissonance as a concept
analogous to Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance. In his seminal
book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Festinger proposed that
pairs of cognitions that are relevant to one another can be either
consonant (i.e., one naturally follows from the other) or dissonant (i.e.,
one is in conflict with the other). Dissonant cognitions imply the
psychologically uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance, which
then leads a person to take steps to reduce this dissonance, such as
avoiding information that would increase dissonance.
Today, although there are many theoretical lenses for studying
cognitive dissonance, several consistencies across the different per-
spectives exist. First, dissonance is conceptualized as a negative
affective state, and the attitude change found in dissonance research is
motivated by the desire to decrease this negative affect or arousal
(Harmon-Jones &Mills, 1999). Second, although there are competing
theories for why dissonant cognitions produce negative affect and
arousal, nearly all explanations in some way invoke the self-concept.
As Aronson (1999a) stated, “cognitive dissonance theory is essen-
tially a theory about sense making: how people try to make sense out
of their environment and their behavior” (p. 105; for a review, see
Aronson, 1999b). The self-consistency explanation for dissonance
implies that dissonance arises in situations that create an inconsistency
between the self-concept and a behavior (Harmon-Jones & Mills,
1999). In a similar manner, the self-affirmation paradigm (e.g., Sher-
man & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988) proposes that dissonance effects
come from behaviors that threaten one’s sense of moral integrity and
self-worth (see also Aronson, 1999a).
Grounded in this perspective, it becomes apparent that emo-
tional dissonance has consistencies with, but also diverges from,
cognitive dissonance theory. Felt and expressed emotions that are
inconsistent with each other, as in the case of surface acting, are
similar to the idea of dissonant cognitions and may indeed produce
the tension and stress that Hochschild (1983) proposed, similar to
the negative affect and arousal associated with dissonant cogni-
tions. What has been overlooked by emotional dissonance re-
searchers is that cognitive dissonance theory proposes that “disso-
nance theory makes its strongest predictions when an important
element of the self-concept is threatened” (Aronson, 1999a, p.
110). In other words, dissonant cognitions per se may not be
sufficient to produce dissonance effects; for example, when par-
ticipants are paid well for lying, dissonance is not aroused because
there is sufficient justification for the behavior (Festinger & Carl-
smith, 1959). Steele and Liu (1983) also found that people have no
problem tolerating cognitive inconsistency if they can affirm some
important aspect of the self.
The theoretical implication for the context of emotional disso-
nance is that the emotional dissonance experienced in surface
acting is most likely to produce stress, tension, and alienation
when this dissonance threatens the self-concept in some way.
378 PUGH, GROTH, AND HENNIG-THURAU