Effects of Teacher Personalities on Emotional Exhaustion: Mediating Role of Emotional Labor

AbstractOne of the most indispensable and important elements of education is teachers whose personality closely affects training and education. In this context, this study examined the effects of teachers' personality traits on their emotional exhaustion in a mediating model which centers around emotional labor. Data were obtained from 798 teachers working in primary and high schools in Ankara and Eskisehir. According to the findings of hierarchical regression analysis, neuroticism and extraversion were found to significantly affect emotional exhaustion whereas other dimensions of personality were not found to be predictive of emotional exhaustion. In general, personality traits were found to predict emotional labor and all dimensions of emotional labor were found to affect emotional exhaustion. Further, fi ndings of mediation analysis showed that surface acting was the only mediator in the relation between neuroticism and emotional exhaustion.Key WordsPersonality, The Big Five Personality, Emotional Exhaustion, Emotional Labor.Problems at workplace affect not only personal life but also work life in a negative way and cause a general unhappiness. This kind of long term unhappiness experienced individually and called as burnout produces negative results both for employees and organizations. Thus the term "burnout" has become an important focus of behavioral investigations. Several personal and organizational factors may determine the level of burnout. In this respect, personality is thought to be one of these factors (Barrick & Mount, 2005; Judge, Woolf, & Hurst, 2009). Hence personality, indicating personal emotions and behaviors (Connor-Smith & Flashbart, 2007), significantly influences employee happiness or unhappiness in general.Considering the fact that burnout is a general state of exhaustion especially for frontline occupations that require face to face interactions and emotional processes (Maslach & Jackson, 1981), it is in fact a serious danger for teachers. Yet, teachers, regardless of their own emotional state, are supposed to listen to students' problems, give them advice, behave warmly towards students, stay calm even in interactions with problem students or attract the attention of students to provide effective learning. All these facts may cause a general exhaustion in teachers.In the relationship between personality and burn-out, other variables such as emotional labor may have a mediating role (Judge et al., 2009). A criti- cal component in various occupations that require interpersonal contact; emotional labor is the act of expressing anticipated emotions during service interactions (Ashforth & Humprey, 1993). Emotional labor is not only affected by personality but it affects the level of burnout itself (Hochschild, 1983; Sutton & Wheatly, 2003; Wharton, 1999). On the basis of these approaches, effects of teachers' personality on their burnout and the mediating role of emotional labor in this relationship were examined in the current study. Variables of personality and emotional labor were investigated along with all their sub-dimensions. However, only the emotional exhaustion of burnout dimension was explored since it is thought to be the core component and the most obvious symptom of burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Although there are a great number of studies on different occupations demonstrating the relations between personality and emotional exhaustion (Kokkinos, 2007; Lopez, Bolano, & Narino, 2010), personality and emotional labor (Austin, Dore, & O'Donovan, 2007; Bono & Vey, 2007) and, emotional labor and burnout dimensions (Pugliesi, 1999; Zhang & Zhu, 2008), comprehensive studies examining all the variables together seem to be inadequate (Kiffin-Peterson, Jordon, & Souter, 2010). Thus, it is thought that the integrated approach of this study may contribute to the literature.Conceptual FrameworkEmotional Exhaustion: Burnout can be defined as the loss of power and energy because of failure, attrition and overload, or the depletion of individuals internal resources as a result of irretrievable demands (Freudenberger, 1974). …