Effects of emotion-rule dissonance on emotional exhaustion and physiological health: A two-wave study

Abstract

Emotion-rule dissonance is regarded as one of the most stressful aspects in the context of emotion work. However, there are few longitudinal studies examining its effects on psychological strain and, more importantly, physiological health. This study investigated synchronous and lagged effects of emotion-rule dissonance on emotional exhaustion, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and body fat, while explicitly considering the reverse direction as well. Two-wave data from 5,073 employees at Time 1 and 525 at Time 2 three years later showed that emotion-rule dissonance and emotional exhaustion have reciprocal synchronous effects on each other. Concerning systolic and diastolic blood pressure, both lagged and synchronous effects were found, but the synchronous effects were twice as large as the lagged effects. No reverse effects of blood pressure on emotion-rule dissonance were observed. For body fat, neither synchronous, nor lagged, nor reverse (lagged/synchronous) effects were found. The results provide strong evidence for the health-impairing consequences of high emotion-rule dissonance, particularly with respect to emotional exhaustion and the risk of hypertension.