ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1612015
This article is part of the Research TopicEducator Burnout – Improving the Understanding of Challenges and Advancing Insights for Interventions and PreventionView all 10 articles
The Impact of Surface Acting and Mindfulness on Preschool Teachers' Burnout: The Roles of Emotional Empathy and Perceived Organizational Support
Provisionally accepted
- 1Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui Province, China
- 2Sehan University, Yeongam County, South Jeolla, Republic of Korea
- 3Sichuan Institute of Industrial Technology, Deyang, Sichuan, China
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This study investigates how the interaction between surface acting and mindfulness affects burnout among preschool teachers, with emotional empathy as a mediator and perceived organizational support (POS) as a moderator. Based on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model and emotional labor theory, we conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey among 3,283 preschool teachers in China. Participants completed validated questionnaires measuring surface acting, mindfulness, emotional empathy, POS, and burnout. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis revealed that the interaction between surface acting and mindfulness significantly predicted burnout in a nonlinear pattern. Emotional empathy partially mediated this relationship, while POS moderated both the direct and indirect effects, weakening the negative impact of surface acting when organizational support was high. These findings highlight the complex dynamics between emotion regulation strategies, personal psychological resources, and organizational context in shaping teacher well-being. The study suggests that mindfulness training and supportive school environments may help reduce burnout in early childhood educators.
Keywords: Surface acting, mindfulness, burnout, emotional empathy, PerceivedOrganizational Support, preschool teachers
Received: 25 Apr 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Gao, guo and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaowen Li, weilin@ahnu.edu.cn
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