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 emotions 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
public administration
Public Administration (a form of governance) or Public Policy and Administration (an academic discipline) is the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit establ ...
,
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
,
childcare
Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
,
health care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
,
social work
Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...
,
hospitality
Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Louis de Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de J ...
,
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
,
advocacy
Advocacy is an Action (philosophy), activity by an individual or advocacy group, group that aims to influence decision making, decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to infl ...
and
espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
. As particular economies move from a
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
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.
Definition
![Waitress2k7](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Waitress2k7.jpg)
The
sociologist Arlie Hochschild
Arlie Russell Hochschild (; born January 15, 1940) is an American professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and writer. Hochschild has long focused on the human emotions that underlie moral beliefs, practices, an ...
provided the first definition of emotional labor, which is displaying certain emotions to meet the requirements of a job.
The related term
emotion work
Emotion work is understood as the art of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling.
Emotion work may be defined as the management of one's own feelings, or work done in an effort to maintain a relationship; there is dispute as ...
(also called "emotion management") refers to displaying certain emotions for personal purposes, such as within the private sphere of one's home or interactions with
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
and
friends
''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa ...
. Hochschild identified three emotion regulation strategies:
cognitive
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
, bodily, and expressive.
Within cognitive emotion work, one attempts to change images, ideas, or thoughts in hopes of changing the feelings associated with them.
For example, one may associate a family picture with feeling happy and think about said picture whenever attempting to feel happy. Within bodily emotion work, one attempts to change physical symptoms in order to create a desired
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
.
For example, one may attempt deep breathing in order to reduce anger. Within expressive emotion work, one attempts to change expressive gestures to change inner feelings, such as smiling when trying to feel happy.
While emotion work happens within the private sphere, emotional labor is emotion management within the workplace according to employer expectations.
Jobs Jobs may refer to:
* Job, an activity that people do for regular income gain
People
* Steve Jobs (1955–2011), co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc
** Steve Jobs (disambiguation)
* Laurene Powell Jobs (born 1963), widow of Steve Jobs
* Lisa ...
involving emotional labor are defined as those that:
# require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public.
# require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person.
# allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees.
Hochschild (1983) argues that within this
commodification
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...
process, service workers are
estranged from their own feelings in the workplace.
Alternate usage
The term has been applied in modern contexts to refer to household tasks, specifically unpaid labor that is often expected of women, e.g. planning celebrations or having to remind their partner of chores. The term can also refer to informal counseling, such as providing advice to a friend or helping someone through a breakup. When Hochschild was interviewed about this shifting usage, she described it having undergone
concept creep
Concept creep is the process by which harm-related topics experience Extension (semantics), semantic expansion to include topics which would not have originally been envisaged to be included under that label. It was first identified by Nick Haslam ...
, expressing that it made the concept blurrier and was sometimes being applied to things that were simply just labor, although how carrying out this labor made a person feel could make it emotional labor as well.
This modern use of the term had originally been introduced by non-professionals of the field and has therefore received criticism by medical and psychological professionals.
Determinants
# Societal, occupational, and organizational
norms. For example,
empirical
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
evidence indicates that in typically "busy" stores there is more legitimacy to express negative emotions than there is in typically "slow" stores, in which employees are expected to behave in accordance with the display rules. Hence, the emotional culture to which one belongs influences the employee's commitment to those rules.
[Download.]
/ref>
# Dispositional traits and inner feeling on the job; such as employees' emotional expressiveness, which refers to the capability to use facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movements to transmit emotions; or employees' level of career identity (the importance of the career role to self-identity
In the psychology of self, one's self-concept (also called self-construction, self-identity, self-perspective or self-structure) is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question ''"Who am I? ...
), which allows them to express the organizationally-desired emotions more easily (because there is less discrepancy between expressed behavior and emotional experience when engaged in their work).
# Supervisory regulation of display rules; Supervisors are likely to be important definers of display rules at the job level, given their direct influence on workers' beliefs about high-performance expectations. Moreover, supervisors' impressions of the need to suppress negative emotions on the job influence the employees' impressions of that display rule.
Surface and deep acting
Arlie Hochschild's foundational text divided emotional labor into two components: surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting occurs when employees display the emotions required for a job without changing how they actually feel. Deep acting is an effortful process through which employees change their internal feelings to align with organizational expectations, producing more natural and genuine emotional displays. Although the underlying processes differ, the objective of both is typically to show positive emotions, which are presumed to impact the feelings of customers and bottom-line outcomes (e.g. sales, positive recommendations, and repeat business). However, research generally has shown surface acting is more harmful to employee health. Without a consideration of ethical values, the consequences of emotional work on employees can easily become negative. Business ethics can be used as a guide for employees on how to present feelings that are consistent with ethical values, and can show them how to regulate their feelings more easily and comfortably while working.[ ]
Careers
In the past, emotional labor demands and display rules were viewed as a characteristic of particular occupations
Occupation commonly refers to:
*Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment
*Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces
*Military occupation, th ...
, such as restaurant workers, cashier
A retail cashier or simply a cashier is a person who handles the cash register at various locations such as the point of sale in a retail store. The most common use of the title is in the retail industry, but this job title is also used in the ...
s, hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
workers, bill collectors, counselors, secretaries
A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a wh ...
, and nurses. However, display rules have been conceptualized not only as role
A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, moral obligation, obligations, beliefs, and social norm, norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavi ...
requirements of particular occupational groups, but also as interpersonal job demands, which are shared by many kinds of occupations.
Bill collectors
In 1991, Sutton did an in-depth qualitative study into bill collectors at a collection agency
Debt collection is the process of pursuing payments of debts owed by individuals or businesses. An organization that specializes in debt collection is known as a collection agency or debt collector. Most collection agencies operate as agents of ...
. He found that unlike the other jobs described here where employees need to act cheerful and concerned, bill collectors are selected and socialized
In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultur ...
to show irritation to most debtor
A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this ...
s. Specifically, the collection agency hired agents who seemed to be easily aroused. The newly hired agents were then trained on when and how to show varying emotions to different types of debtors. As they worked at the collection agency, they were closely monitored by their supervisors to make sure that they frequently conveyed urgency to debtors.
Bill collectors' emotional labor consists of not letting angry and hostile debtors make them angry and to not feel guilty about pressuring friendly debtors for money. They coped with angry debtors by publicly showing their anger or making jokes when they got off the phone. They minimized the guilt they felt by staying emotionally detached from the debtors.
Childcare workers
The skills involved in childcare
Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
are often viewed as innate to women, making the components of childcare invisible. However, a number of scholars have not only studied the difficulty and skill required for childcare, but also suggested that the emotional labor of childcare is unique and needs to be studied differently. Performing emotional labor requires the development of emotional capital, and that can only be developed through experience and reflection. Through semi-structured interviews, Edwards (2016) found that there were two components of emotional labor in childcare in addition to Hochschild's original two: emotional consonance and suppression. Edwards (2016) defined suppression as hiding emotion and emotional consonance as naturally experiencing the same emotion that one is expected to feel for the job.
Food-industry workers
Wait staff
In her 1991 study of waitresses
Waiting staff (British English), waitstaff (North American English), waiters (male) / waitresses (female), or servers (North American English), are those who work at a restaurant, a diner, or a Bar (establishment), bar and sometimes in pri ...
in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, Paules examines how these workers assert control and protect their self identity during interactions with customers
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...
. In restaurant
A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearan ...
work, Paules argues, workers' subordination to customers is reinforced through "cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
symbols that originate from deeply rooted assumptions about service work." Because the waitresses were not strictly regulated by their employers
Employment is a relationship between two party (law), parties Regulation, regulating the provision of paid Labour (human activity), labour services. Usually based on a employment contract, contract, one party, the employer, which might be a co ...
, waitresses' interactions with customers were controlled by the waitresses themselves. Although they are stigmatized by the stereotypes
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
and assumptions of servitude surrounding restaurant work, the waitresses studied were not negatively affected by their interactions with customers. To the contrary, they viewed their ability to manage their emotions as a valuable skill that could be used to gain control over customers. Thus, the Philadelphia waitresses took advantage of the lack of employer-regulated emotional labor in order to avoid the potentially negative consequences of emotional labor.
Though Paules highlights the positive consequences of emotional labor for a specific population of waitresses, other scholars have also found negative consequences of emotional labor within the waitressing industry. Through eighteen months of participant observation
Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (incl. cultural an ...
research, Bayard De Volo (2003) found that casino
A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...
waitresses are highly monitored and monetarily bribed to perform emotional labor in the workplace. Specifically, Bayard De Volo (2003) argues that through a sexualized environment and a generous tipping system, both casino owners and customers control waitresses' behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...
and appearance
Appearance may refer to:
* Visual appearance, the way in which objects reflect and transmit light
* Human physical appearance, what someone looks like
* ''Appearances'' (film), a 1921 film directed by Donald Crisp
* Appearance (philosophy), or p ...
for their own benefit and pleasure. Even though the waitresses have their own forms of individual and collective resistance mechanisms, intense and consistent monitoring of their actions by casino management makes it difficult to change the power dynamics of the casino workplace.
Fast-food employees
By using participant observation and interview
An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" ...
s, Leidner (1993) examines how employers in fast food restaurants regulate workers' interactions with customers. According to Leidner (1993), employers attempt to regulate workers' interactions with customers only under certain conditions. Specifically, when employers attempt to regulate worker–customer interactions, employers believe that "the quality of the interaction is important to the success of the enterprise", that workers are "unable or unwilling to conduct the interactions appropriately on their own", and that the "tasks themselves are not too complex or context-dependent." According to Leidner (1993), regulating employee interactions with customers involves standardizing workers' personal interactions with customers. At the McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechri ...
fast food restaurants in Leidner's (1993) study, these interactions are strictly scripted, and workers' compliance with the scripts and regulations are closely monitored.
Along with examining employers' attempts to regulate employee–customer interactions, Leidner (1993) examines how fast-food workers' respond to these regulations. According to Leidner (1993), meeting employers' expectations requires workers to engage in some form of emotional labor. For example, McDonald's workers are expected to greet customers with a smile
A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile.
Among humans, a smile expresses ...
and friendly attitude independent of their own mood or temperament
In psychology, temperament broadly refers to consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
Some researchers point to association of temperam ...
at the time. Leidner (1993) suggests that rigid compliance with these expectations is at least potentially damaging to workers' sense of self and identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
. However, Leidner (1993) did not see the negative consequences of emotional labor in the workers she studied. Instead, McDonald's workers attempted to individualize their responses to customers in small ways. Specifically, they used humor
Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...
or exaggeration
Exaggeration is the representation of something as more extreme or dramatic than it really is. Exaggeration may occur intentionally or unintentionally.
Exaggeration can be a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke str ...
to demonstrate their rebellion against the strict regulation of their employee–customer interactions.
Physicians
According to Larson and Yao (2005), empathy
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...
should characterize physicians' interactions with their patients because, despite advancement in medical technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
, the interpersonal relationship between physicians
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
and patients
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health c ...
remains essential to quality healthcare
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
. Larson and Yao (2005) argue that physicians consider empathy a form of emotional labor. Specifically, according to Larson and Yao (2005), physicians engage in emotional labor through deep acting by feeling sincere empathy before, during, and after interactions with patients. On the other hand, Larson and Yao (2005) argue that physicians engage in surface acting when they fake empathic behaviors toward the patient. Although Larson and Yao (2005) argue that deep acting is preferred, physicians may rely on surface acting when sincere empathy for patients is impossible. Overall, Larson and Yao (2005) argue that physicians are more effective and enjoy more professional satisfaction when they engage in empathy through deep acting due to emotional labor.
Police work
According to Martin (1999), police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
work involves substantial amounts of emotional labor by officers, who must control their own facial and bodily displays of emotion in the presence of other officers
An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," f ...
and citizens
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
. Although policing is often viewed as stereotypically masculine
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors con ...
work that focuses on fighting crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...
, policing also requires officers to maintain order and provide a variety of interpersonal services. For example, police must have a commanding presence that allows them to act decisively and maintain control in unpredictable situations while having the ability to actively listen and talk to citizens. According to Martin (1999), a police officer who displays too much anger
Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat.
A person experiencing anger will often experience physical effects, su ...
, sympathy
Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of ano ...
, or other emotion while dealing with danger on the job will be viewed by other officers as someone unable to withstand the pressures of police work, due to the sexist views of many police officers. While being able to balance this self-management of emotions in front of other officers, police must also assertively restore order and use effective interpersonal skills to gain citizen trust
Trust often refers to:
* Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality
It may also refer to:
Business and law
* Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another
* Trust (bus ...
and compliance. Ultimately, the ability of police officers to effectively engage in emotional labor affects how other officers and citizens view them.
Public administration
Many scholars argue that the amount of emotional work required between all levels of government is greatest on the local level. It is at the level of cities and counties that the responsibility lies for day to day emergency preparedness, firefighters, law enforcement, public education, public health, and family and children's services. Citizens in a community expect the same level of satisfaction from their government, as they receive in a customer service
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...
-oriented job. This takes a considerate amount of work for both employees and employers in the field of public administration. There are two comparisons that represent emotional labor within public administration, "Rational Work versus Emotion Work", and "Emotional Labor versus Emotional Intelligence."
Performance
Many scholars argue that when public administrators perform emotional labor, they are dealing with significantly more sensitive situations than employees in the service industry. The reason for this is because they are on the front lines of the government, and are expected by citizens to serve them quickly and efficiently. When confronted by a citizen or a co-worker, public administrators use emotional sensing to size up the emotional state of the citizen in need. Workers then take stock of their own emotional state in order to make sure that the emotion they are expressing is appropriate to their roles. Simultaneously, they have to determine how to act in order to elicit the desired response from the citizen as well as from co-workers. Public Administrators perform emotional labor through five different strategies: Psychological First Aid, Compartments and Closets, Crazy Calm, Humor, and Common Sense.
Definition: rational work vs. emotion work
According to Mary Guy, Public administration does not only focus on the business side of administration but on the personal side as well. It is not just about collecting the water bill or land ordinances to construct a new property, it is also about the quality of life and sense of community that is allotted to individuals by their city officials. Rational work is the ability to think cognitively and analytically, while emotional work means to think more practically and with more reason.
Definition: intelligence vs. emotional intelligence
Knowing how to suppress and manage one's own feelings is known as emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can emotion recognition, recognize their own emotions and those of others, use em ...
. The ability to control one's emotions and to be able to do this at a high level guarantees one's own ability to serve those in need. Emotional intelligence is performed while performing emotional labor, and without one the other can not be there.
Gender
Macdonald and Sirianni (1996) use the term "emotional proletariat" to describe service jobs in which "workers exercise emotional labor wherein they are required to display friendliness and deference
Deference (also called submission or passivity) is the condition of submitting to the espoused, legitimate influence of one's superior or superiors. Deference implies a yielding or submitting to the judgment of a recognized superior, out of re ...
to customers." Because of deference, these occupations tend to be stereotyped as female jobs, independent of the actual number of women working the job. According to Macdonald and Sirianni (1996), because deference is a characteristic demanded of all those in disadvantaged
The "disadvantaged" is a generic term for individuals or groups of people who:
* Face special problems such as physical or mental disability
* Lack money or economic supportKingdom of Nepal: Economic and Social Inclusion of the Disadvantaged Poo ...
structural positions, especially women, when deference is made a job requirement, women are likely to be overrepresented in these jobs. Macdonald and Sirianni (1996) claim that " no other area of wage labor are the personal characteristics of the workers so strongly associated with the nature of the work." Thus, according to Macdonald and Sirianna (1996), although all workers employed within the service economy may have a difficult time maintaining their dignity
Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. It is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable ...
and self-identity due to the demands of emotional labor, such an issue may be especially problematic for women workers.
Emotional labor also affects women by perpetuating occupational segregation
Occupational segregation is the distribution of workers across and within occupations, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. Other types of occupational segregation include racial and ethnicity segregation, and sexual orienta ...
and the gender wage gap
The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted ...
. Job segregation, which is the systematic tendency for men and women to work in different occupations, is often cited as the reason why women lack equal pay when compared to men. According to Guy and Newman (2004), occupational segregation and ultimately the gender wage gap can at least be partially attributed to emotional labor. Specifically, work-related tasks that require emotional work thought to be natural for women, such as caring and empathizing
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cog ...
are requirements of many female-dominated occupations. However, according to Guy and Newman (2004), these feminized work tasks are not a part of formal job descriptions and performance evaluations: "Excluded from job descriptions and performance evaluations, the work is invisible and uncompensated. Public service relies heavily on such skills, yet civil service systems, which are designed on the assumptions of a bygone era, fail to acknowledge and compensate emotional labor." According to Guy and Newman (2004), women working in positions that require emotional labour in addition to regular work are not compensated for this additional labour because of the sexist notion that the additional labour is to be expected of them by the fact of being a woman.
Implications
Positive affective display in service interactions, such as smiling
A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile.
Among humans, a smile expresses ...
and conveying friendliness, are positively associated with customer positive feelings, and important outcomes, such as intention to return, intention to recommend a store to others, and perception of overall service quality. There is evidence that emotional labor may lead to employees' emotional exhaustion
Emotional exhaustion is a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive job, personal demands, and/or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is ma ...
and burnout over time, and may also reduce employees' job satisfaction
Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentedness with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be ...
. That is, higher degree of using emotion regulation on the job is related to higher levels of employees' emotional exhaustion, and lower levels of employees' job satisfaction.
There is empirical evidence that higher levels of emotional labor demands are not uniformly rewarded with higher wages. Rather, the reward is dependent on the level of general cognitive demands required by the job. That is, occupations with high cognitive demands evidence wage returns with increasing emotional labor demands; whereas occupations low in cognitive demands evidence a wage "penalty" with increasing emotional labor demands. Additionally, innovations that increase employee empowerment — such as conversion into worker cooperatives, co-managing schemes, or flattened workplace structures — have been found to increase workers’ levels of emotional labor as they take on more workplace responsibilities.
Coping skills
Coping
Coping refers to conscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviours and can be individual or social.
Theories of coping
Hundreds of coping strategies have been proposed in an attempt to ...
occurs in response to psychological stress—usually triggered by changes—in an effort to maintain mental health and emotional well-being. Life stressors are often described as negative events (loss of a job). However, positive changes in life (a new job) can also constitute life stressors, thus requiring the use of coping skills to adapt. Coping strategies are the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that you use to adjust to the changes that occur in your life. The use of coping skills will help a person better themselves in the work place and perform to the best of their ability to achieve success. There are many ways to cope and adapt to changes. Some ways include: sharing emotions with peers, having a healthy social life outside of work, being humorous, and adjusting expectations of self and work. These coping skills will help turn negative emotion to positive and allow for more focus on the public in contrast to oneself.
See also
References
Further reading
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Communication
Emotion
Human resource management
Labor
Life skills
Occupational stress