PRESCHOOL TEACHERS’ EMOTIONAL LABOR STRATEGIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

This study investigates preschool teachers' emotional labor strategies from the perspective of positive psychology, recognizing that emotional labor significantly impacts teachers' well-being and effectiveness. The research sample consisted of teachers from 25 kindergartens in Henan Province, China, with 425 questionnaires distributed. The results indicated that preschool teachers engage in emotional labor at a high level, with average scores of 3.37 for surface acting, 4.11 for deep acting, and 4.02 for natural acting; among these strategies, deep acting was the most frequently used, followed by natural acting, and surface acting, with statistically significant differences between the three; surface acting was significantly negatively correlated with psychological capital and hope dimension, but not significantly correlated with other dimensions; deep acting and natural acting were both significantly positively correlated with psychological capital and all four of its dimensions. The results of the regression analysis showed that the predictive power of the three emotional labor strategies on psychological capital was 24.2%.