Associations of workplace violence and emotional labor with insomnia symptoms: Directional pathways and the mediating role of presleep arousal in a 3-wave panel study of Korean workers.

OBJECTIVES

Workplace violence and emotional labor are prevalent occupational stressors linked to insomnia. However, the longitudinal mechanisms and directionality remain unclear. This study examines the reciprocal associations among workplace violence, emotional labor, and insomnia symptoms, focusing on the mediating roles of cognitive and somatic presleep arousal.

METHODS

Three-wave longitudinal panel data (1-year intervals) from the Korean Work, Sleep, and Health Study (KWSHS) were analyzed: 1492 workers for workplace violence and 710 customer-facing workers for emotional labor. Cross-lagged panel models were used to test directional relationships, and mediation effects were evaluated using the product-of-coefficients approach with delta-method standard errors. Linear mixed models assessed whether the adverse impacts of these stressors on sleep outcomes intensified over time.

RESULTS

Cross-lagged panel models found that workplace violence and presleep arousal reciprocally predicted one another, leading to subsequent insomnia symptoms. Conversely, emotional labor exhibited a unidirectional pathway, predicting later arousal and insomnia symptoms without significant reverse effects. Cognitive and somatic arousal showed significant indirect associations between workplace violence and insomnia; for emotional labor, only the cognitive arousal pathway remained significant after false-discovery-rate correction. Linear mixed models indicated significant Time × workplace violence interactions, suggesting that adverse impacts of workplace violence on somatic arousal and insomnia symptoms intensify over time, whereas emotional labor showed relatively stable effects over time.

CONCLUSIONS

Both workplace violence and emotional labor were prospectively associated with insomnia symptoms, with presleep arousal as a potential intermediate pathway. Workplace violence showed reciprocal associations with insomnia, whereas emotional labor was primarily associated with subsequent insomnia symptoms.