ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2019
Surface Acting or Deep Acting, Who Need More Effortful? A Study on Emotional Labor Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of studies that used NIRS to measure neural activation during emotion processing in healthy individuals.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Classroom demands and resources and emotional labour strategies in Chinese after-school programs.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- How emotional labor shapes marital intentions: a moderated mediation model of discrepancy feelings and self-esteem in young adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The cost of smile: how individual and organizational factors moderate the impact of emotional labor on work alienation via burnout.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Is Teachers' Depression Contagious to Students? A Study Based on Classes' Hierarchical Models.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Emotion Regulation, Effort and Fatigue: Complex Issues Worth Investigating.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Psychosocial predictors of emotional labour among employees of merged and acquired banks in Ibadan, South-West, Nigeria.Heliyon · 2021Article
- A Call for the Empirical Investigation of Tear Stimuli.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Emotional labor is characterized by two main regulation strategies: surface acting and deep acting. However, which strategy consumes more energy? To explore this, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure changes in hemoglobin density while participants performed a task requiring them to make the opposite emotional facial expression of that presented in a picture. We found that (1) neither surface nor deep acting led to a significant change in hemoglobin concentration in the prefrontal cortex; (2) making negative and positive facial expressions activated the same left front and middle areas of the prefrontal cortex; and (3) making positive facial expressions activated the rear portion of the prefrontal cortex, but making negative facial expressions did not. Based on these findings and past work, we can infer that deep and surface acting may not significantly differ in terms of the activity in the prefrontal cortex energy consumed. Furthermore, engaging in positive and negative emotional labor appear to utilize some of the same neurological mechanisms, although they differ in others.
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