Customer (In)Justice and Emotional Labor: The Role of Perspective Taking, Anger, and Emotional Regulation

This study investigates the impact of customer interpersonal and informational injustice on service workers' emotional labor (surface acting). Results from a study conducted on 152 bank tellers in Germany showed that customers are evaluated by employees as a potential source of unfairness. Perceptions of customer justice were found to interact with individual differences in perspective taking in the prediction of surface acting such that the negative effect of customer injustice on surface acting was stronger for those low in perspective taking (compared to those high in perspective taking). Although anger was expected to mediate this moderated effect, this hypothesis was not confirmed. Considering the results post hoc, a revised theoretical model is proposed based on Cropanzano, Weiss, Suckow, and Grandey's model of justice and emotional regulation. Future research is needed to test this model and determine what leads employees to deploy emotional regulation strategies when faced with unfair customers.