Nurses working in high-pressure urban hospitals must continuously regulate their emotions to meet organizational “display rules.” Emotional labour, especially surface acting (suppressing genuine feelings while displaying prescribed emotions), has been linked to reduced job satisfaction and increased burnout in many countries (Hochschild, 1983; Grandey, 2000). Evidence from India, and particularly from large metropolitan centers such as Kolkata, remains limited. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been proposed as a personal resource that might protect nurses from the negative effects of emotional labour (Wong & Law, 2002; Schutte et al., 2007), but its precise role as a mediator or moderator in this relationship is not well understood in the Indian healthcare context. A cross-sectional descriptive–correlational survey was conducted among 500 registered nurses providing direct patient care in urban hospitals in Kolkata, West Bengal. Emotional labour (surface and deep acting) was assessed using the Emotional Labour Scale, emotional intelligence using the Wong–Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, and job satisfaction using the Job Satisfaction Survey (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Wong & Law, 2002; Spector, 1985).
