Previous research has shown that surface acting—displaying an emotion that is dissonant with inner feelings—negatively impacts employees’ well-being. However, most studies have neglected the meaning that employees develop around emotional demands requiring surface acting. This study examined how employees’ responsibility attributions of client behavior demanding surface acting influence employees’ emotional exhaustion, and the mediational role of distributive justice in this relationship. Relying on Fairness Theory, it was expected that employees’ responsibility attributions of client behavior demanding emotion regulation would be related to their perceptions of distributive injustice during the service encounter, which in turn would mediate the effects of responsibility attribution on emotional exhaustion. In addition, drawing on the conservation of resources model, we contended that leader support would moderate the impact of distributive injustice on emotional exhaustion. Two scenario-based experiments were conducted. Study 1 (N = 187) manipulated the attribution of responsibility for emotional demands. The findings showed that distributive injustice and emotional exhaustion were higher when responsibility for the surface acting demands was attributed to the client. A bootstrapping mediational analysis confirmed employees’ attributions have an indirect effect on emotional exhaustion through distributive justice. Study 2 (N = 227) manipulated responsibility attribution and leader support. The leader support moderation effect was confirmed.

Background/Objectives: Although COVID-19 may cause cognitive impairments for up to six months, the long-term effects of mild cases remain unclear. Given their high exposure and critical role in public health, assessing this impact on healthcare workers is essential. Aim: The present study aimed to examine the cognitive and emotional effects of mild COVID-19 in 92 healthcare workers one year after infection. Methods: In total, 50 had experienced mild COVID-19, while 42 had not been infected. Participants completed a neuropsychological assessment evaluating attention, memory, and executive functions, along with self-reported measures of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, occupational stress, and burnout. Results: No significant cognitive differences were observed between the groups. However, both exhibited moderate-to-severe psychological distress, with the COVID-19 group showing higher trait anxiety (p = 0.032). Emotional symptoms were significantly associated with neuropsychological performance—higher burnout (ρ from −0.20 to −0.28, p < 0.05) and stress (ρ from −0.25 to −0.33, p < 0.01) correlated with slower responses and more errors in tasks such as the D2 variation index, TESEN execution speed, Rey–Osterrieth Figure recall, and Digit Span forward span. Conclusions: These findings suggest no long-term cognitive impairment after mild COVID-19 but highlight the substantial emotional toll of the pandemic on healthcare workers. Future research should explore cognitive reserve as a protective factor.

Background: Pregnancy represents a major identity transition, yet most perinatal assessments focus primarily on emotional symptoms rather than on how women integrate the maternal role into their broader identity and life context. Difficulties in maternal role integration may constitute an early vulnerability factor for psychological distress. This study aimed to develop and validate the Maternal Role Integration Questionnaire—pregnancy version (MRIQ-P), a brief instrument designed to assess maternal identity and role balance during pregnancy, and to examine its clinical relevance for perinatal mental health. Methods: A sequential mixed-methods design was employed. Phase 1 involved focus groups with pregnant women (n = 17) and cognitive debriefing to generate and refine items. Phase 2 included expert evaluation of content validity. In Phase 3, the MRIQ-P was psychometrically validated in a sample of pregnant women (n = 256), randomly divided into exploratory (n = 83) and confirmatory (n = 173) subsamples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, along with reliability analyses, tests of convergent, discriminant, incremental, and measurement invariance validity. Results: Analyses supported a bifactor structure comprising a general factor of maternal role integration and two specific dimensions: Maternal Identity and Balance of the Maternal Role. The final 8-item version demonstrated excellent internal consistency for the total score (α = 0.96) and subscales (α = 0.98 for Maternal Identity and α = 0.98 for Balance of the Maternal Role), as well as measurement invariance across primiparous and multiparous women. Higher maternal role integration was associated with greater self-esteem, positive affect, and life satisfaction, and with lower anxiety, depression, prenatal distress, and maternal ambivalence. Importantly, MRIQ dimensions explained additional variance in antenatal depression and dispositional guilt beyond established psychological predictors, supporting its incremental and potential clinical utility. Conclusions: The MRIQ is a brief, psychometrically robust, and clinically relevant instrument for assessing maternal role integration during pregnancy. By capturing identity- and role-related processes that are not directly addressed by symptom-based screening tools, it may contribute to early identification of vulnerability and to more comprehensive perinatal psychological assessment in healthcare settings.

Background/Objectives: Although COVID-19 may cause cognitive impairments for up to six months, the long-term effects of mild cases remain unclear. Given their high exposure and critical role in public health, assessing this impact on healthcare workers is essential. Aim: This study examined the cognitive and emotional effects of mild COVID-19 in 92 healthcare workers one year after infection. Methods: Fifty had experienced mild COVID-19, while 42 had not been infected. Participants completed a neuropsychological assessment evaluating attention, memory, and executive functions, along with self-reported measures of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, occupational stress, and burnout. Results: No significant cognitive differences were observed between groups. However, both exhibited moderate to severe psychological distress, with the COVID-19 group showing higher trait anxiety. Emotional symptoms were significantly associated with neuropsychological performance: higher burnout and stress correlated with more errors and slower responses on tasks such as the D2 variance index, TESEN, Rey-Osterrieth Figure, and Digit Span. Conclusions: These findings suggest no long-term cognitive impairment after mild COVID-19 but highlight the substantial emotional toll of the pandemic on healthcare workers. Future research should explore cognitive reserve as a protective factor.

Emotional labor, particularly in frontline service roles, has traditionally been examined through the lens of performance strategies, such as surface or deep acting. However, emerging research suggests that employees’ subjective interpretations of emotionally demanding situations—especially attributions of responsibility and perceived fairness—play a critical role in shaping their well-being. This study adopts a qualitative phenomenological approach to explore how frontline employees engage in meaning-making regarding the emotional labor demands during customer interaction. Drawing on six group semi-structured interviews, we conducted a thematic analysis to investigate ho<w workers attribute responsibility for emotion regulation demands and how these attributions relate to perceptions of distributive justice and emotional exhaustion. Results indicate that employees differentiate between emotional labor demands based on who they perceive as responsible for the triggering event—whether the client or themselves. Attributions of responsibility for these demands, especially when placed on clients, were associated with a stronger sense of distributive injustice and heightened emotional exhaustion. The evidence extend current emotional labor models by highlighting the centrality of meaning-making processes in employee experience and suggest that responsibility attribution and fairness appraisals are critical mechanisms through which emotional labor impacts occupational well-being. Implications for theory and workplace practices in service contexts are discussed.