The Role of Self-Compassion and Experience in Psychologists' Latent Emotional Labour Strategy Profiles

Emotional labour has long been associated with personal and organizational outcomes such as burnout. However, theoretically dichotomising regulation into surface and deep acting may constrain the ecological validity of research as iterative and person-centered approaches to emotion regulation are not considered. Furthermore, recent research suggests self-compassion and experience may predict emotional labour regulation in psychologists, but specific mechanisms accounting for this relationship are unknown. We addressed these concerns by examining how self-compassion and career experience predict latent profiles of emotional labour regulation strategies in psychologists and subsequent burnout.

We performed latent profile analysis, multinomial logistic regression, and a one-way between-groups ANOVA on data from 232 international psychologists across two time points.

We found a similar but not identical pattern of latent profiles when compared to previous studies in different occupations. Self-compassion and career experience significantly predicted subsequent profile membership and profiles characterized by less surface acting and more authentic and genuine emotional displays had statistically significantly lower levels of emotional exhaustion.

Our findings suggest that self-compassion promotes adaptive emotional labour regulation strategies in psychologists, that experienced clinicians express emotion more authentically, and that regulation that involves authentic and genuine expression is linked with lower emotional exhaustion.