EMOTIONAL LABOR

Emotional Labor

Emotional Labor

Since emotional labor has been conceptualized in a variety of ways, a multitude of measures of emotional labor also exist. For example, it has been measured by considering (a) the result of dichotomizing occupational categories into high- and low-emotional-labor jobs; (b) the emotional tone of occupations; (c) the emotional requirements of occupations, such as the frequency of emotional display; (d) the emotional dissonance associated with surface acting; and (e) the emotional regulation involved in surface and deep acting. A growing number of researchers appear to be adopting the emotional regulation perspective of emotional labor (Brotheridge, 2008).

Initially, researchers assumed that performing emotional labor was universally draining and alienating for employees and a cause of burnout. However, research suggests that the way in which emotional labor is performed influences its effects on employees. Employees who express emotions that they do not really feel (i.e., surface acting) tend to experience a lack of authenticity and, as a result, report high levels of emotional exhaustion. In contrast, employees who try to align their felt and expressed emotions through deep acting tend to feel a sense of authenticity and, consequently, relatively low levels of emotional exhaustion and high levels of personal accomplishment. Surface acting has also been associated with reduced levels of job satisfaction and higher turnover levels (Bono, 2006). Researchers have found that emotions can be passed from one person to another, such that, for example, customers feel enthusiastic as a result of being served by enthusiastic salespeople. However, there is still little research that considers the relationship between the way in which emotional labor is performed (i.e., surface or deep acting) and customer emotions, attitudes, and behaviors.

A major premise of the early work on emotional labor was that it can have a detrimental impact on employee well-being. When there is a discrepancy between felt emotions and displayed emotions, a state of emotional dissonance is proposed to exist, and, theoretically, this is a stress-inducing state. Individuals who report engaging in surface acting should be, in theory, experiencing emotional dissonance, because they report changing the expression of emotion but not the underlying affect. (Ashforth, 2006)

In general, evidence for the existence of emotional dissonance and the negative effects of emotional labor is mixed. Laboratory research clearly shows that suppressing the expression of felt negative emotion has detrimental effects on physiological and cognitive functioning. Further, emotional labor is a type of self-regulation, and ...