Surface acting and exhaustion: The moderating role of eudaimonia

Surface acting (faking emotions) is one of the stressors experienced by contact employees during service interactions with customers, and it has implications for workers' exhaustion. One challenge of research and practice is to identify moderators that help to better understand the positive relationships between surface acting and exhaustion. The present study proposes the two dimensions of eudaimonia beliefs about well‐being (self‐development and contribution‐to‐others beliefs) as moderators between surface acting and exhaustion. We performed regression analyses with 817 contact employees working in 118 health‐care organizations providing services to people with intellectual disability. Results confirmed the hypotheses, showing that contribution‐to‐others strengthens the link from surface acting to exhaustion, whereas self‐development weakens this relationship. Therefore, self‐development beliefs act as a protector for workers when they have to deal with situations that require surface acting.