Definition and Concept of Emotional Labor
– Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job.
– The sociologist Arlie Hochschild provided the first definition of emotional labor.
– Emotion work refers to displaying certain emotions for personal purposes.
– Cognitive, bodily, and expressive emotion regulation strategies are identified by Hochschild.
– Jobs involving emotional labor require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public.
– The term emotional labor has been applied to household tasks and informal counseling.
– Hochschild described the shifting usage as concept creep.
– Medical and psychological professionals have criticized the modern use of the term.
– The term originally introduced by non-professionals of the field.
– How carrying out labor makes a person feel can make it emotional labor.
Determinants of Emotional Labor
– Societal, occupational, and organizational norms influence emotional labor.
– Dispositional traits and inner feeling on the job impact emotional expressiveness.
– Supervisory regulation of display rules influences employees’ impressions.
– Emotional culture influences employees’ commitment to display rules.
– Career identity affects the ease of expressing organizationally-desired emotions.
Types of Emotional Labor
– Emotional labor involves surface acting and deep acting.
– Surface acting occurs when employees display required emotions without changing how they feel.
– Deep acting is an effortful process of changing internal feelings to align with organizational expectations.
– Both surface acting and deep acting aim to show positive emotions.
– Surface acting is generally more harmful to employee health.
Emotional Labor in Different Occupations
– Emotional labor demands and display rules are characteristic of various occupations.
– Display rules are shared by many kinds of occupations as interpersonal job demands.
– Teachers in China have been studied for their emotional labor in early childhood education.
– Experienced teachers have higher levels of emotional labor.
– Bill collectors have also been studied for their emotional labor.
– Waitresses assert control and protect self-identity during interactions with customers.
– Waitresses view their ability to manage emotions as a valuable skill to gain control over customers.
– Casino waitresses are highly monitored and bribed to perform emotional labor.
– Casino owners and customers control waitresses’ behavior and appearance.
– Employers regulate workers’ interactions with customers under certain conditions.
– Regulating employee interactions involves standardizing personal interactions with customers.
– Compliance with regulations potentially damaging to workers’ sense of self.
– McDonald’s workers attempt to individualize responses to customers.
– Workers use humor or exaggeration to rebel against strict regulation.
– Physicians engage in emotional labor through deep acting or surface acting.
– Deep acting preferred for sincere empathy, surface acting used when impossible.
– Physicians more effective and satisfied when engaging in empathy through deep acting.
– Police work involves substantial emotional labor.
– Officers must control displays of emotion in front of other officers and citizens.
– Policing requires maintaining order and providing interpersonal services.
– Police officers viewed negatively if they display too much emotion.
– Public administration requires emotional work at all levels of government, greatest at local level.
– Local government responsible for day-to-day emergency preparedness and services.
– Citizens expect satisfaction from government, similar to customer service-oriented jobs.
– Public servants may be at risk of alienation.
Implications and Coping Skills for Emotional Labor
– Positive affective display in service interactions leads to positive customer feelings.
– Emotional labor may lead to emotional exhaustion, burnout, and reduced job satisfaction.
– Higher levels of emotional labor demands are not always rewarded with higher wages.
– The reward for emotional labor depends on the level of cognitive demands in the job.
– Employee empowerment can increase levels of emotional labor in the workplace.
– Coping skills are essential for maintaining mental health and emotional well-being.
– Sharing emotions with peers can help cope with emotional labor.
– Maintaining a healthy social life outside of work is important for coping.
– Humor can be a helpful coping mechanism for emotional labor.
– Adjusting expectations of self and work can aid in coping with emotional labor. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their personas during interactions with customers, co-workers, clients, and managers. This includes analysis and decision-making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed. This is done so as to produce a certain feeling in the customer or client that will allow the company or organization to succeed.
Roles that have been identified as requiring emotional labor include those involved in education, public administration, law, childcare, health care, social work, hospitality, media, advocacy, and espionage. As particular economies move from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands when compared to sixty years ago.
