What Is Emotional Labour?

What is Emotional Labour?

How to understand and manage emotional labour in relationships and in the workplace. The Difference between emotion work and emotional labour.

What Is Emotional Labour?

What are some examples of emotional labour?

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild provided the first definition of emotional labor, which is displaying certain emotions to meet the requirements of a job. Today emotional labour has been be described and interpreted in a range of ways and is understood to occur when people feel as though they have to deliberately suppress or conceal their true feelings and emotions. Despite how they feel, people will instead  ‘put on a brave face’ or regulate their emotions during interactions with others. When this happens a persons behaviour becomes incongruent with their internal experience and actual emotion felt. This is referred to as “emotional labour” 

Emotional labour is most commonly associated with people who work within service based roles who need to display certain emotions to meet the requirements of their job. Arlie made a distinction that Emotion work is actually the process that occurs in private with friends and family which you can read more on here: Russell Hochschild, Arlie (November 1979). "Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure". American Journal of Sociology. University of Chicago Press. 85 (3): 551–575. doi:10.1086/227049. JSTOR 2778583. Pdf.

Why does emotion work so often fall to women to do?

Some research indicates that the emotional management that women do is not identical to that of men and that  in general, women come into a relationship or marriage having been “groomed” for the role of task of being the “emotional manager’ due to some of the cultural norms of today as well as the perceived ‘roles’ women have when it comes to a relationship. These norms often imply that emotion work is reserved for women. 

Emotion work is really about our attitudes, feelings and beliefs in relationships and how we re-orientate them in accordance with the accepted “norms” of emotional expression. Emotion work is often felt when we have friends or family members who try to convince or pressure us to conform to the emotional “status quo” or respond in certain ways Eg. We don’t speak about “negative” feelings.Again, there is a difference in this that emotion work, happens in the context of our personal relationships. Eg friends and family.

Some common examples of emotion work include:

• Showing affection to others 

• Apologizing after an argument 

• Discussing problems that need to be addressed  

• Making sure the household runs smoothly and bills are paid

Emotional labor is emotion management within the workplace according to employer expectations. 
Jobs involving emotional labor are defined as those that:

• Require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public.
• Require the person 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.

There are many roles that identify as requiring emotional labour, of these roles there is often an assumption that due to the nature of these roles (service based roles) that women experience more ‘emotional labour’ than men.

How can we lighten our emotional labour load (perhaps saying no to organising all the family get togethers, doing more than our fair share of chores) without harming our relationships?

The key word here needs to be boundaries. 

Healthy boundaries are not only of service to ourselves but also to others. When we hold boundaries around how much we are able to do, contribute or help out with we are taking good care of our emotional wellbeing. We also give permission for others to set their own boundaries and take good care of themselves.

Boundaries also allow us to respond in ways that are congruent with what we actually feel versus taking on the emotional labour of doing something because we think we “should” or because it is the “right” thing to do. 

Without boundaries we will continue to place ourselves in the position of emotion work.

If you are working on how to communicate a boundary or say no to something try some of the below:

·       Here’s what will work for me...⁠⠀⁠⠀

·       Can I get back to you on that?⁠⠀

·       I need to think about if that will work for me⁠

·       I really appreciate you asking me, but I can’t⁠

·       I’m honoured that you would ask me, and I’ll have to say no this time⁠⠀

·       No, I can’t do that, but here’s what I can do⁠⠀

How can emotional labour take a toll on a person?

Arlie Hochschild said there were two components to emotional labour, surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting occurs when employees ‘display' the emotions required for a job without changing how they actually feel. A kind of fake it till you make it attitude where people experience emotional dissonance, that is, the feeling of tension when our emotional expression is not congruent with how we actually feel. 

Deep acting on the other hand is a purposeful process that requires a persons conscious  effort and focus in changing their internal feelings to match their outer expression. This change through emotional labour, then aligns with and organization’s or business expectations and produces a more natural and genuine emotional display as the person has good intentions and is trying to come form a place of empathy and understanding in their response.

When it comes to emotional labour, the objective is to present others with positive emotions, which are presumed to impact the feelings of customers and the  bottom-line outcomes (e.g. sales, customer compliments and repeat business). However, research generally has shown ‘surface acting’ is more harmful to an employee health, as it does not come with a deeper desire or willingness to actually change. There is also evidence that emotional labour can result in a person feeling emotionally exhausted and ‘burnt out’ over time, resulting in lower levels of job satisfaction, deep acting can actually be supportive of an individual.

There is an argument that knowing how to understand and manage ones own feelings can be seen as a form of emotional intelligence. Being able to effectively control our emotions means that we are may be able to serve others more effectively. Thus we are actually being emotionally intelligent then we are performing emotional labour or emotion work. 

The risk in this view however is that when it comes to emotional labour or emotion work is that over time we may become estranged from our own feelings. Ongoing surface acting also creates more emotional dissonance, tension and ultimately stress. Surface acting is also not a sustainable or effective strategy when it comes to developing authentic and nourishing interpersonal relationships.  

With ongoing emotion work or emotional labour we risk becoming desensitised to our own feelings and needs. This split between how we feel and how we express ourselves can impact on our sense of self, how close and connected we feel to others and our ability  to feel as though we are living authentically. In short we experience emotional exhaustion, with fewer resources we also can find ourselves unable to cope with day to day feelings and emotions that do arise.

For further reading and research head to: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30040678?seq=1 and https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778583

If you find that you are taking on a level of emotional labour or are struggling with emotion work in your intimate relationships and would like to discuss this with someone you can get in touch and book a session with Natajsa HERE.