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ISSN : 1229-8778
While numerous literatures on emotional labour have shown its resulting negative effects and factors that affects the perceived strength of the negativity, there is a lack of researches that show practical methodologies applicable to the actual business environments. Differentiated from conventional stress management paradigm, the authors show a new stress management methodology based on construal level theory, and verified its effectiveness by both a laboratory test, experiment 1, and a field test, experiment 2. Recent researches on construal level demonstrate that environmental stimuli have an effect on a mindset, and that abstract thinking leads to information processing centered on desirability and positiveness of an event. The authors design a visual stimulus promoting abstract thinking and examine the effect of the stimulus on the perceived stress level of emotional labourers. Designed visual stimulus, ‘target image’ is used to engender distant psychological distance from temporal dimension. Experiment 1 shows that the target image indeed promotes abstract thinking, which in turn entails positive affect. To rule out alternate account by a simple image effect, an image with a widely accepted pattern is introduced and the effect are compared. Results revealed that the target image group show higher construal level, higher preference for desirability, higher positive affect, as well as higher willing-to-pay. From the experiment 2, the effectiveness of the target image in the actual field application is verified. For this purpose, the target images were installed in individual booths of a call center of a tourism company in Korea, and the effect of the target image before and after installation were examined. Analysis results showed that construal level, positive affect, and more importantly perceived stress level were improved with the statistically significance. Further bootstrapping analysis to identify the underlying mechanism revealed that the effect of construal level on perceived stress was fully mediated by positive affect.
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