A multilevel analysis of the links between daily emotional labor, daily spiritual experiences, and daily stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic both necessitate and obstruct emotional regulation and coping mechanisms. Despite growing interest in the connection between stress and spirituality, multilevel studies addressing day-level variance to understand how spiritual experiences and emotional regulation are linked with stress during this unique situation are scarce. This study aims to analyze how daily spiritual experiences (DSE) and daily emotional labor (EL) connect with the daily stress levels of employees during the pandemic. DESIGN AND METHOD: Data collected from 132 employees for five consecutive workdays (660 d-level, 132 person-level responses) were analyzed via Hierarchical Linear Modeling. RESULTS: Multilevel analysis provided evidence for the negative association between DSE and daily stress. The "faking emotions" and "hiding emotions" dimensions of daily EL were positively and significantly related to daily stress, while the "deep acting" dimension demonstrated no significant relationship. There was no evidence for the moderator role of DSE in the relationship between daily EL and stress. CONCLUSION: The form of daily EL is crucial to understanding how it associates with daily stress. Although its buffering role on the adverse effects of EL is not significant, DSE directly relates to lower stress levels.

A Multilevel Investigation of the Effects of Daily Work-Family Interaction on Daily Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This research aimed to examine the effects of daily work-family conflict and work-family enrichment on daily positive and negative affect levels of employees during the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. The multilevel structure of the research design makes this study original. 730 day-level data were collected from 146 respondents during five consecutive workdays. One week later, a larger survey was delivered for assessing the person-level variables. The results indicated that both forms of work-family conflict significantly decreased positive affect and increased negative affect. Both types of work-family enrichment significantly increased positive affect; but only daily work to family enrichment significantly decreased daily negative affect. Findings also revealed that positive affect levels of respondents increase while negative affect levels decrease with time. On the days employees worked from distance, lower levels of positive and negative affect were experienced.