1.3.1 Effects of Teachers’ Emotions for Students
According to crossover theory, “individuals’ experiences at work are interwoven with the experiences of those they interact with” (Härtel & Page, 2009, p. 237). Consequently, teachers’ emotional experiences should be related to those of their interaction partners in the classroom, which are their students. The crossover phenomenon can be explained by various mechanisms. First, it has been shown in different areas of research (e.g. social psychology, neuroscience, work and organizational psychology, communication research) that humans “catch” psychological states such as emotions of others through emotional contagion (e.g., Bakker & Schaufeli, 2000; Song, Foo, & Uy, 2008; Westman, 2001).
Emotional contagion is an unconscious process, whereby a person mimics and synchronizes facial
expressions, movements or postures of another person and, as a result, converges emotionally (see Hatfield et al., 1994). Second, emotional crossover processes could occur through empathy on behalf of the receiver (Westman & Vinokur, 1998). Teachers and students usually know one another for an extended period of time and it can be assumed that students’ empathy can lead to emotional adaption. Finally, it is assumed that emotions cross over indirectly through mediating variables that depend on the outcome variable that is studied (e.g., Neff, Sonnentag, Niessen, & Unger, 2012; Westman, 2001; Westman, Vinokur, Hamilton, & Roziner, 2004).
According to Frenzel et al.’s theoretical model on antecedents and effects of teachers’ emotions (2009), teachers’ instructional behavior could act as a mediating variable in emotional crossover processes between teachers and their students. Emotions initiate action tendencies (see also Frijda, 2005) that can result in either approach or avoidance behavior (for example, enjoyment in approach and anxiety in avoidance tendencies). Positive emotions, such as joy, are associated with flexibility, adaptability and creativity in that they can broaden an individual’s thought-action repertoire (broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, see Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) which is especially useful when being faced with obstacles. Teaching is often characterized by the necessity of quick responses to student behavior or questions. If students do not initially understand the teacher’s explanation of the learning material, the experience of joy could provide the teacher with the necessary readiness to provide an alternative explanation (Carson et al., 2010). In contrast, negative emotions such as teachers’ anxiety are likely associated with the tendency for teachers to keep rigid control over the teaching process (Frenzel, 2014;
Gloria, Faulk, & Steinhardt, 2013), which could lead to a-motivation in students (Assor, Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon, & Roth, 2005). Generally, it can be assumed that teachers’ emotions affect their cognitive, social-emotional and motivational supportive behaviors in the classroom and thus facilitate students’
learning, motivation and emotions.
The second study presented in this dissertation (chapter 3) focused on crossover processes between teachers’ emotions and students’ emotions in the classroom and posits that teachers’ emotions may have an impact on students’ emotions via their instructional behavior but also through direct crossover processes like emotional contagion.
1.3.2 Effects of Teachers’ Emotions for Teachers
Emotions are an important part of personal well-being (e.g., Day & Qing, 2009; Fredrickson, 1998; Schimmack, 2008) and it is assumed that teachers’ emotions play a crucial role in the development of burnout in teachers (Carson, 2006; Chang, 2009). Research has shown that teachers’ positive affect is positively related to resilience and negatively correlated to teachers’ burnout (Gloria et al., 2013).
Similarly, high levels of enthusiasm in teachers have been shown to be negatively related to burnout (Kunter, Frenzel, Nagy, Baumert, & Pekrun, 2011). Since positive affective states promote a successful adaption to stress, they seem to be a protective factor against the development of burnout. This is in line with assumptions of the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson
& Branigan, 2005; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). On the other side, negative affective states can lead to emotional dissonance, which can be considered a risk factor for the development of burnout according to meta-analytic findings (Bono & Vey, 2005; Kenworthy, Fay, Frame, & Petree, 2014). Emotional dissonance can be defined as a state in which the required emotional display is incongruent with one’s true feelings (e.g., Zapf & Holz, 2006), leading to self-regulatory attempts to change the way one feels or behaves.
To date, only little is known about the relationship between teachers’ discrete emotions and burnout (Chang, 2009). Furthermore, only a few studies have linked burnout to teachers’ momentary experiences – instead more general, trait-based measures have been employed in the majority of studies (Carson, Plemmons, Templin, & Weiss, 2011). However, according to the accessibility model of emotional self-report (Robinson & Clore, 2002), there are differences between self-reports on emotions currently being experiences (state emotions) and retrospectively remembered emotional experiences (trait emotions). More specifically, since the individual has to report on experiences that are distant from actual events and experiences, retrospective self-reports on emotions are assumed to be influenced by beliefs about the emotions based on semantic knowledge. In contrast, since the individual is only required to report experiences that are currently occurring, the assessment of state emotions are assumed to reflect momentary and “really” experienced emotions.
Study 3 focused on the differences between state and trait reports of teachers’ emotional experiences based on their level of emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is the core component in most conceptions of burnout (e.g., Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011), because it represents the basic stress component that surfaces when individuals feel overextended by work demands and drained of emotional and physical resources (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Taris, Le Blanc, Schaufeli, & Schreurs, 2005). Furthermore, emotional exhaustion is assumed to play a key role in the construction of identity-related beliefs (Schutz, Cross, Hong, & Osbon, 2007) within the negative belief systems (feeling emotionally drained), which impacts retrospective but not state self-reports of negative emotions. Based on these considerations, the third study focused on the relationship between trait and state reports of emotional experiences in the classroom and how these reports are influenced by emotional exhaustion.
The final study (chapter 5) links emotional exhaustion to teachers momentarily felt emotions in the classroom and momentary emotional labor. In the literature, two major emotional labor strategies are differentiated: surface acting and deep acting (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). While deep acting refers to the regulation of one’s felt emotions to match the required emotional display (i.e., resolving emotional dissonance), surface acting refers to a superficial regulation by suppressing undesired emotional displays or by faking desired emotions (i.e., emotional dissonance remains). While most research on emotional dissonance has been conducted with service workers (e.g., flight attendants, call center agents) who have explicit emotional display rules (e.g., J. A. Morris & Feldman, 1996), emotional dissonance or surface acting is also an important factor in teachers’ lives (see Çukur, 2009). Display rules might be more implicit and not a formal job requirement (Diefendorff, Richard, & Croyle, 2006; Philipp, 2010), but is has been shown that teachers’ emotional experiences and their emotional display are not necessarily congruent (Philipp & Schüpbach, 2010). In qualitative interviews, teachers reported to regulate their emotions frequently because they believe that it makes them more effective (Sutton, 2004). However, how this emotion regulation is performed matters. Quantitative studies have found that deep acting strategies are linked to low burnout rates in teachers (Carson et al., 2011), whereas surface acting strategies are linked to a higher risk of emotional exhaustion in teachers (Philipp & Schüpbach, 2010). This can be explained by the strength model of self-control (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007), which states that emotion regulation – as a form of self-control – draws on limited resources that can deplete, it is comparable to a muscle that becomes tired (i.e., ego depletion). If teachers regulate their emotions superficially by suppressing undesired emotions or by faking desired emotions (i.e., surface acting), an incongruence between displayed and truly felt emotions (i.e., emotional dissonance) remains, which requires many regulatory resources.
The deleterious effects of emotional dissonance are well established in the research literature, yet only little is known about teachers’ emotional labor in the form of surface acting on a momentary state level (i.e., experiences in the classroom) and the relation of surface acting to discrete emotion experiences.
Consequently, in the fourth study teachers’ momentarily experienced discrete emotions and momentary emotional labor while teaching as well as how they relate to teachers’ emotional exhaustion were examined.