Emotional labor 733886 216353528 2008-06-01T07:03:14Z SmackBot 433328 Date the maintenance tags or general fixes {{Mergefrom|emotion work|date=May 2008}} '''Emotional labor''' is a form of emotional regulation where in which workers are expected to display certain emotions as part of their job, and to promote organizational goals. The intended effects of these emotional displays are on other, targeted people, who can be clients, customers, subordinates or co-workers.<ref name="grandey"> Grandey, A.A. (2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 59-100. [http://www.personal.psu.edu/aag6/GrandeyJOHP.pdf] </ref> ==Definition == [[Image:Waitress2k7.jpg|thumb|250px|A waitress at a restaurant is expected to do emotional work, such as smiling and express positive emotion towards clients]] The term '''"emotional labor"''' was first defined by the [[sociology|sociologist]][[Arlie Russell Hochschild| Arlie Hochschild]] as the <blockquote> "management of feeling to create a publicity observable [[Facial communication|facial]] and bodily display".<ref name=Hochschild>*Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.</ref> </blockquote> Following her piece in which she coined this term, several conceptualizations of emotional labor have been proposed. Some conceptual [[ambiguity]] persists, but each conceptualization has in common the general underlying assumption that '''emotional labor involves managing [[emotion]]s so that they are consistent with [[organizations|organizational]] or occupational display rules, regardless of whether they are discrepant with internal feelings'''.<ref name="grandey" /> <br />According to Hochschild, [[job]]s involving emotional labor are defined as those that: <br />(1) require [[face to face| face-to-face]] or voice-to-voice contact with the public; <br />(2) require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person;<br />(3) allow the [[employment|employees]] to exercise a degree of [[control]] over their emotional activities.<ref name="Hochschild" /> <br /> '''Display rules''' refer to the organizational rules about what kind of emotion to express on the job.<ref name="Rafaeli_Sutton_87"> Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, R.I. (1987). Expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy of Management Review, 12, 23-37. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0363-7425(198701)12%3A1%3C23%3AEOEAPO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A]. </ref> === Emotion regulation=== '''Emotion regulation''' refers to the process of [[modify]]ing one's own [[emotions]] and expressions. That is, the processes by which individuals [[influence]] which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions.<ref>Gross, J. (1998b). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299. [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:whMoSTJD754J:www-psych.stanford.edu/~psyphy/Pdfs/1998%2520Review%2520of%2520General%2520Psychology%2520-%2520Emerging%2520Field%2520of%2520Emo.%2520Reg..pdf+The+emerging+field+of+emotion+regulation:+An+integrative+review.+Review+of+General+Psychology&hl=iw&ct=clnk&cd=1].</ref> <br /> There are two kinds of Emotion regulation:<ref name="grandey" /> # '''antecedent-focused emotion regulation''', which refers to modifying initial feelings by changing the situation or the [[cognition]]s of the situation; # '''response-focused emotion regulation''', which refers to modifying [[behavior]] once emotions are experienced by [[suppression|suppressing]], [[fake|faking]] or amplifying an emotional response. == Forms of emotional labor == Employees can display organizationally-desired emotions by [[acting]] out the emotion. Such acting can take two forms:<ref>Grove, S.J.& Fisk, R.P. (1989). Impression management in services marketing: a dramaturgical perspective. In Impression Management in the Organization (Giacalone RA and Rosenfeld P, Eds) pp 427-438, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. </ref> <br /> # '''[[surface acting]]''', involves "painting on" affective displays, or [[Deception|faking]]; Surface acting involves an employee's (presenting emotions on his or her "surface" without actually feeling them. The employee in this case puts on a facade as if the emotions are felt, like a "[[persona#The Persona in psychology|persona]]"). # '''[[deep acting]]''' wherein they modify their inner feelings to match the emotion expressions the organization requires. Though both forms of acting are internally false, they represent different [[intention]]s. That is, when engaging in deep acting, an actor attempts to modify feelings to match the required displays, in order to seem [[authentic]] to the [[audience]] ("faking in [[good faith]]"); in surface acting, the alternative strategy, employees modify their displays without shaping inner feelings. They conform to the display rules in order to keep the job, not to help the customer or the organization, ("faking in [[bad faith]]"). <br />Deep acting is argued to be associated with reduced [[Stress (medicine)|stress]] and an increased sense of personal accomplishment; whereas surface acting is associated with increased [[Stress (medicine)|stress]], [[emotional exhaustion]], [[depression (mood)|depression]], and a sense of [[Authenticity (philosophy)|inauthenticity]].<ref>Grandey, A.A. (2003). when "the show must go on": Surface acting and deep acting as determinants of emotional exhaustion and peer-rated service delivery. ''Academy of Management Journal, 46(1),'' 86-96.</ref><ref name="Rafaeli_Sutton_87" /> In 1983, [[Arlie Russell Hochschild]], who wrote about emotional labour, coined the term ''emotional dissonance'' to describe this process of "maintaining a difference between feeling and feigning".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hochschild |first=Arlie Russell |title=The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling |publisher=University of California Press |date=1983 |pages=p.90 }}</ref> ==Emotional labor in organizations == [[Image:Altenpflegerin D1824.jpg|thumb|right|150px|A nurse working in a hospital, is expected to express positive emotions towards patients, such as warmth and compassion.]] In past, emotional labor demands and display rules were viewed as a characteristics of particular [[wikt:occupation|occupations]], such as [[waiting staff|restaurant workers]], [[cashier]]s, [[hospital]] workers, bill collectors, [[counselor]]s, [[secretary|secretaries]], and [[nurse]]s. However, display rules have been conceptualized not only as [[role]] requirements of particular occupational groups, but also as [[interpersonal]] job demands, which are shared by many kinds of occupations.<ref name="Diefendorff">Diefendorff, J. M., & Richard, E. M. (2003). Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 284-294.</ref> === Determinants of using emotional labor=== # Societal, occupational, and organizational [[Norm (sociology)|norm]]s. For example, [[empirical]] evidence indicates that in typically "busy" stores there is more legitimacy to express [[negative emotion]]s, than there is in typically "slow" stores, in which employees are expected to behave accordingly to the display rules;<ref>Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, R. I. 1989. The expression of emotion in organizational life. Research in Organizational Behavior, 11, 1-43.</ref> and so, that the emotional culture to which one belongs influences the employee's [[commitment]] to those rules.<ref name="grandey_2005"> Grandey, A.A., Fisk, G.M. & Steiner, D.D. (2005). Must "service with a smile" be stressful? The moderate role f personal control for American and French employees. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (5), 893-904. [http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/a/aag6/GrandeyJAPreformatted.doc] </ref> # [[Dispositional attribution|Dispositional traits]] and inner feeling on the job; such as employee's [[emotional expressiveness]], which refers to the capability to use facial expressions, voice, gestures, and body movements to transmit emotions;<ref>Friedman, H. S., Prince, L. M., Riggio, R. E., & DiMatteo, R. (1980). Understanding and assessing nonverbal expressiveness: The affective communication test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 333-351.</ref> or the employee's level of [[career identity]] (the importance of the career role to one's [[self-identity]]), which allows him or her to express the organizationally-desired emotions more easily, (because there is less discrepancy between his or her expressed behavior and emotional experience when engage their work).<ref>Wilk, S.L. & Moynihan, L.M. (2005). Display rule "regulators": The relationship between supervisors and workers emotional exhausion. Academy of Management Journal, 44 (5), 1018-1027. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16162064&dopt=Citation]</ref> # Supervisory regulation of display rules; That is, Supervisors are likely to be important definers of display rules at the job level, given their direct influence on worker's 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.<ref name="Diefendorff"/> === Implications of using emotional labor === Researches indicate that emotional labor jobs require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person. For example, [[flight attendant]]s are encouraged to create good cheer in passengers and bill collectors promote [[anxiety]] in debtors. <br />[[Research]] on [[emotional contagion]] has shown that exposure to an individual expressing positive or negative emotions can produce a corresponding change in the [[emotional state]] of the observer. Accordingly, a recent [[study]] reveals that employees' display of [[positive emotion| positive emotions]] is indeed positively related to customers' [[positive affect]].<ref>Pugh, S.D. (2001). Service with a smile: emotional contagion in the service encounter. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 490–509.[http://www.belkcollege.uncc.edu/sdpugh/myweb2/Pugh%20AMJ%202001.pdf]</ref> <br /> Positive affective display in service interactions, such as [[smiling]] and conveying [[friendliness]], are positively associated with important customer outcomes, such as intention to return, intention to recommend a store to others, and perception of overall service quality.<ref>Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. & Berry. (1988). SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Customer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 12-40.</ref> <br /> There is a growing body of evidences that emotion labor may lead to employee's [[emotional exhaustion]] and [[burnout]] over time, and may also reduce employee's [[job satisfaction]]. That is, higher degree of using emotion regulation on the job is related to higher levels of employees' emotional exhaustion,<ref name="grandey_2005"/> and lower levels of employees' job satisfaction.<ref>Brotheridge, C. M., & Grandey, A. A. (2002). Emotional labor and burnout: Comparing two perspectives of ‘people work'. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 17-39. [http://www.aop.psy.unibe.ch/lehre/proseminar_burnout/9_23.05.07%20Brotheridge%20Grandey%202002.pdf]</ref> <br /> 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.<ref>Glomb, T.M., Kammeyer-Mueller, J. & Rotundo, M. (2004). Emotional Labor Demands and Compensating Wage Differentials. Journal of Applied Psychology 89, 700-714.[http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%206/Glomb.pdf]</ref> == Applications == Tracy found “three central practical concerns applicable to service organizations” ( Tracy, 2000 p.120). Her study aboard cruise ships “illustrates the strength and potential abuse of customer-based control of service personnel” (Tracy, 2000 p.120). This happens because in service based organizations customers become a sort of a second boss for the employees. Since service employees are taught that the customer is always right this creates confusion where to draw boundaries. This is magnified in situations that manager use customer’s “evaluations to reward and punish employees” (Tracy,2000 p.120). Tracy explains that “when managers choose to use customer evaluations to reward and punish employees, customers essentially become a second boss”( Tracy, 2000 p.120) “Especially in job situations in which much of the organizational product consists of employee personality, organizational leaders must temper and contextualize customer service programs with information that helps employees recognize and negotiate the boundaries between selling a smile and accommodation customer abuse or harassment”( Tracy, 2000, p.120) These findings can be universally applied to service based industries that uses customer feedback in order to judge employee performance in order to maximize production and employee satisfaction. These findings can be used to help service based companies (callcenter,sales, service) implement new policies for dealing with customers internally and externally. == Footnotes == {{reflist}} == See also== * [[Affect display]] * [[emotion work]] * [[Affective labor]] * [[Emotion]] * [[Emotional exhaustion]] * [[Emotional Intelligence]] * [[Social influence]] * [[Customer service]] * [[Customer relationship management]] * [[Group Emotion]] * [[Dispositional Affect]] * [[Emotions and culture]] * [[Organizational Psychology]] * [[Sexism]] ==References== *Abraham, R. (1998). Emotional dissonance in organizations: Antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 124(2), 229-246. *Adelman, P. K. (1995). Emotional labor as a potential source of job stress. In S. L. Sauter & L. R. Murphy (Eds.), Organizational risk factors for job stress (pp. 371 - 381). Washington, DC: American Psychological Associassion. *Ashford, B. E. & Humphrey, R. H. (1993). Emotional labor in service roles: The influence of identity. Academy of Management Review, 18(1), 88-115. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0363-7425%28199301%2918%3A1%3C88%3AELISRT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F] *Brotheridge, C. M., & Grandey, A. A. (2002). Emotional labor and burnout: Comparing two perspectives of ‘people work'. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 60, 17-39. [http://www.aop.psy.unibe.ch/lehre/proseminar_burnout/9_23.05.07%20Brotheridge%20Grandey%202002.pdf] * Brotheridge, C. M. & Lee, R. T. (2002). Testing a conservation of resources model of the dynamics of emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 7, 57-67. *Cropanzano, R., Rupp, D.E. & Byrne, Z.S. (2003). The relationship of emotional exhaustion to work attitudes, job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 160-169.[http://www.ilir.uiuc.edu/rupp-papers/CropanzanoRuppByrneJAP2003.pdf] *Diefendorff, J. M., & Richard, E. M. (2003). Antecedents and consequences of emotional display rule perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 284-294. *Erickson, R. J., & Wharton, A. S. (1997). Inauthenticity and depression: Assessing the consequences of interactive service work. Work and Occupations, 24(2), 188 – 213. [http://wox.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/2/188] *Friedman, H. S., Prince, L. M., Riggio, R. E., & DiMatteo, R. (1980). Understanding and assessing nonverbal expressiveness: The affective communication test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 333-351. *Glomb, T.M., Kammeyer-Mueller, J. & Rotundo, M. (2004). Emotional Labor Demands and Compensating Wage Differentials. Journal of Applied Psychology 89, 700-714. [http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%206/Glomb.pdf] *Grandey, A.A. (2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize amotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 59-100. [http://www.personal.psu.edu/aag6/GrandeyJOHP.pdf] *Grandey,A., Dickter, D. & Sin, H.P. (2004). The customer is not always right: Customer verbal aggression toward service employees. journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), 397-418. [http://www.personal.psu.edu/aag6/JOB252.pdf] *Grandey, A.A., Fisk, G.M. & Steiner, D.D. (2005). Must "service with a smile" be stressful? The moderate role f personal control for American and French employees. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (5), 893-904. [http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/a/aag6/GrandeyJAPreformatted.doc] *Grove, S.J.& Fisk, R.P. (1989). Impression management in services marketing: a dramaturgical perspective. In Impression Management in the Organization (Giacalone RA and Rosenfeld P, Eds) pp 427-438, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. *Gross, J. (1998a). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224-237. *Gross, J. (1998b). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299. [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:whMoSTJD754J:www-psych.stanford.edu/~psyphy/Pdfs/1998%2520Review%2520of%2520General%2520Psychology%2520-%2520Emerging%2520Field%2520of%2520Emo.%2520Reg..pdf+The+emerging+field+of+emotion+regulation:+An+integrative+review.+Review+of+General+Psychology&hl=iw&ct=clnk&cd=1] *Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. *Ito, J., & Brotheridge, C. (2003). Resources, coping strategies, and emotional exhaustion: A conservation of resources perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 490–509. [http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00018791/2003/00000063/00000003/art00033] *Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. & Berry. (1988). SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Customer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 12-40. *Pugliesi, K. (1999). The consequences of emotional labor in a complex organization. Motivation and Emotion, 23, 125-54.[http://www.springerlink.com/content/p55632jpr6703000] *Rafaeli, A. & Sutton, R. I. 1989. The expression of emotion in organizational life. Research in Organizational Behavior, 11, 1-43. *[[Charles C. Ragin]], 'Constructing Social Research: The Unity and Diversity of Method', Pine Forge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8039-9021-9 *Sutton, R. I. & Rafaeli, I. (1988). Untangling the relationship between displayed emotions and organizational sales: The case of convenience stores. Academy of Management Journal, 31(3), 461-487.[http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-4273(198809)31:3%3C461:UTRBDE%3E2.0.CO;2-3] *Tracy, S. (2000) Becoming a Character for Commerce Emotion. Management Communication Quarterly, 14. 90-128 *Wichroski, M. R. (1994). The secretary: Invisible labor in the workworld of women. Human Organization, 53(1), 33-41. *Wright, T.A. & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Emotional exhaustion as a predictor of job performance and voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 (3), 486-493. [http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2310580] *Zapf, D. (2002). Emotion work and psychological well-being. A review of the literature and some conceptual considerations. Human Resource Management Review, 12, 237-268. ==External links== <DIV dir=ltr> * [http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb05/psychologie/Abteil/ABO/forschung/emoarbeit_e.htm Emotion Work (Emotional Labor)] [[Category:Sociology]] [[Category:Communication]] [[Category:Social psychology]] [[Category:Organizational studies and human resource management]] [[de:Emotionsarbeit]] [[he:עבודת רגשות]] [[ja:感情労働]]