“Exhaustive but effective”: A multi-site study investigating the profiles of teachers' emotions and emotional labor

Teachers routinely experience and manage a variety of emotions to meet the requirements of their profession. Previous research has primarily focused on how teachers' emotions or their emotional labor affects their well-being and teaching quality. The present study takes a more holistic, person-centered approach to identify groups of teachers with distinct emotional experiences and emotional labor tendencies. In the first study, 474 Canadian secondary school teachers (female: 72.5%) were categorized into three profiles: emotionally healthy deep actors, emotionally healthy surface actors, and emotionally unhealthy surface actors. The emotionally healthy deep actors reported the highest levels of well-being, while the emotionally unhealthy surface actors reported the lowest. The same profiles were observed in Study 2 with 85 German secondary school teachers (female: 57.6%). Among these teachers, the emotionally healthy surface actors were rated by students as the most supportive (N_students = 1327). Conversely, the emotionally unhealthy surface actors received the least favorable student ratings of teaching quality (cognitive activation, classroom management, student support). In conclusion, our study indicates that emotional labor, specifically surface acting, has a double-edged function, with both positive and negative implications. On the one hand, it is linked to diminished well-being among teachers, while on the other hand, it has the potential to enhance students' perceptions of teacher support. Copyright © 2025 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Society for the Study of School Psychology.