Emotional labor in hospitality: Positive affective displays in service encounters

The study used web-based simulated hospitality scenarios to examine cultural differences in emotional cognition of facial expressions among Chinese and American subjects in an exploratory study. Results indicate that the two cultural groups interpreted smiling and direct eye-gaze similarly. Although a smiling face elicited positive emotional affective responses from both cultural groups, smiling alone was not sufficient to stimulate more positive subject reactions: Smiling needs to be accompanied by direct eye-gaze to fully elicit positive reactions from subjects. Study results suggest that global hospitality standards should reflect findings of psychological research on emotional labor and also that business normative guidelines should encourage the display of smiling faces along with direct eye-gaze to motivate a positive customer experience. No support was found for tailoring facial expressions related training to customers' cultural backgrounds.