Role of Display Rule Demands and Affective Traits in Emotional Exhaustion among Customer Services

The present study examined the impact of gender, display rule demands, and affective personality traits on emotional exhaustion in a sample of 232 Pakistani customer services representatives of cellular companies and banks. Emotion Work Requirements Scale (Best, Downey, & Jones, 1997) was used to measure display rule demands; emotional exhaustion was measured using Erickson and Ritter's (2001) Emotional Exhaustion Scale; while affectivity was measured through Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and Emotional Intelligence Scale (Wong & Law, 2002). Analysis revealed that women employees were significantly higher on emotional exhaustion and hiding negative emotions as compared to their men counterparts. The final hierarchical regression model demonstrated that display rule demands, i.e. hiding negative emotions, negative affectivity, and emotional intelligence were positive predictors of emotional exhaustion whereas positive affectivity turned out to be a negative predictor of emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, Sobel test (Sobel, 1982) indicated that negative affectivity fully mediated the relation between display rule demands of hiding negative emotions and emotional exhaustion. Limitations and suggestions for future studies have been discussed.