Faking emotions makes one an abusive supervisor, says NUS Business School study

Emotions shouldn't be bottled up.

The mentally draining task of faking one’s emotions to adhere to certain workplace policies can make supervisors more abusive, according to new research by Dr Sam Yam, Assistant Professor of Management and Organisation at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

The study discovered that leaders who reported doing more ‘surface acting’, such as faking a good mood or suppressing anger in front of customers, were about 1.34 times more likely to be abusive towards their staff, because surface acting deprived these bosses of the mental resources to rein in abusive behaviour.

However, supervisors who had a higher degree of self-control as a personality trait were less likely (by about 14 percent) to become abusive from surface acting, according to the research.

The study required supervisors to respond to statements such as "I faked a good mood in front of customers”, “In general, I am good at resisting temptation” and “I feel like my willpower is gone”. Their staff were also required to rate their leaders’ supervisory behaviour over 3 weeks. The survey was aimed at assessing how often supervisors engaged in 'surface acting', how much mental self-control they had, and whether their staff viewed them as abusive leaders.

“Our findings are significant because they open the door to more intervention options. For instance, service organisations might want to reconsider how they encourage their staff to provide good service. While forcing employees to smile and suppress other emotions might help a company's image, such practices also risk compromising supervisor-staff relationships in the long run,” said Dr Yam.