Emotion regulation and job stress: The mediating effect of relationship quality in the US and Korean samples

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the association between emotion regulation and job stress is mediated by workplace relationship quality, and to understand the influence of culture in such a relationship. Structural equation modeling was conducted using the data collected from 271 employees in the United States (N = 156) and South Korea (N = 115). Our results demonstrate that relationship quality fully mediated the relationship between reappraisal and job stress. We found that the models of emotion regulation affecting job stress through the relationship quality are invariant across the US and Korea, indicating the possibility that the identified emotion regulation-job stress model can be generalized across cultures. The findings provide information to practitioners regarding how employees cope with stress and allow for the improvement of psychological well-being through application of the integrative mediation model related to emotion regulation and job stress. This study also extends extant psychological theories to explain how emotion regulation is associated with job stress, by demonstrating the mediating role of workplace relationship quality.