Authentic Emotional Displays and Job Burnout Among Preschool Teachers: A Chain Mediation Model of Psychological Capital and Family–Work Conflict

Emotional labor is inherently intensive in preschool teaching, and it is often conceptualized as resource loss, which may heighten burnout and hinder early childhood education quality-improvement initiatives. Accordingly, this study shifts attention to the resource-enhancing potential of authentic emotional displays and examines the mechanisms linking authentic displays to preschool teachers’ burnout, with psychological capital and family–work conflict as key mediators. Using cross-sectional survey data from 234 preschool teachers in Jiangxi Province, China, and structural equation modeling, we observed that authentic emotional displays were associated with lower burnout primarily through psychological capital, with an additional sequential association via psychological capital and family–work conflict, whereas the pathway through family–work conflict alone was not supported. These findings suggest a potential role of authentic emotional displays in relation to psychological resources and family-to-work spillover, extending emotional labor research and providing insights for interventions aimed at reducing preschool teacher burnout. The study challenges the prevailing resource loss perspective of emotional labor, clarifies psychological capital as a central mechanism linking authenticity to cross-domain strain and teacher well-being, and emphasizes the importance of interventions that strengthen psychological resources and boundary management.