The role of emotional labor in explaining teachers' enthusiasm and students' outcomes: A multilevel mediational analysis

The aim of the present study was to explore the role of teachers' emotional labor in explaining their enthusiasm, as perceived by their students, and the students' outcomes. Data on emotional labor from 90 high-school teachers and data on perceived teacher enthusiasm, intrinsic motivation, positive affect, and deep learning strategy from their students (N = 2019) were obtained. In order to account for the nested structure of the data and to examine the relationships between study constructs, a multilevel structural-equation modelling technique (ML-SEM) was implemented. The results at the class level showed that teacher enthusiasm fully mediated the relationship between the emotional-labor strategy of hiding feelings and student outcomes, and partially mediated the relationship between the emotional-labor strategy of faking emotions and students' positive affect. Also, faking emotions has direct and positive contribution in explaining class positive affect and intrinsic motivation.