Chameleonic or Consistent? A Multilevel Investigation of Emotional Labor Variability and Self-Monitoring

We introduce the concept of emotional labor variability, which captures individual differences in surface acting and deep acting fluctuations over time. In a multilevel study of 78 customer service employees who provided 522 matched daily surveys over a two-week period, employees who were more variable in their use of surface acting reported lower levels of job satisfaction and higher levels of work withdrawal. Self-monitoring was positively associated with both the level and variability of surface acting, and the effects of surface acting variability on job satisfaction and work withdrawal were weaker when self-monitoring was high. The results for deep acting were inconsistent. Overall, our results demonstrate how the concepts of surface acting variability and deep acting variability can extend theory and research on emotional labor as well as on self-monitoring.