Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effects of social support between emotional labor and job satisfaction in clinical nurses. Methods: Participants were 311 clinical nurses and data were collected from July 11th to 18th, 2014. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient and hierarchical multiple regression with SPSS 21.0. Results: The job satisfaction indicated a significant relationship to surface-acting (r=-.191, p=.001), deep-acting (r=.179, p=.002) and social support (r=.342, p<.001) respectively. Emotional labor significantly affected job satisfaction (F=11.592, p<.001), and explained 5.4% of the variance in job satisfaction. The social support acted as a moderator on the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction at significant level (F=11.416, p<.001). Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that it is important to develop social support promoting and stress relief program for clinical nurses to improve job satisfaction.

Keywords: Emotional labor, Job satisfaction, Social support, Nurse