emotional labor 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 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 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. definition a waitress at a restaurant is expected to do emotional labor, such as smiling and expressing positive emotion towards customers the sociologist arlie hochschild provided the first definition of emotional labor, which is displaying certain emotions to meet the requirements of a job. the related term emotion work (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 and friends. hochschild identified three emotion regulation strategies: cognitive, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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), 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 a nurse working in a hospital is expected to express positive emotions towards patients, such as warmth and compassion. in the past, emotional labor demands and display rules were viewed as a characteristic of particular occupations, such as restaurant workers, cashiers, hospital workers, bill collectors, counselors, secretaries, and nurses. 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. teachers zang et al. (2019) looked at teachers in china, using questionnaires the researchers asked about their teaching experience and their interaction with the children and their families. according to numerous studies, early childhood education is important to a child's development, which can have an effect on the teachers emotional labor, along with their emotional labor having an effect on the children. a big focus in this study was the use of surface acting in early childhood teacher. zang et al. (2019) found that surface acting was used significantly less than deep and natural acting in kindergarten teachers, along with early childhood teacher are less likely to fake or suppress their feelings. they also found that more experienced teachers had higher levels of emotional labor, because they either have more skills to suppress their emotions, or they are less driven to use surface acting. bill collectors in 1991, sutton did an in-depth qualitative study into bill collectors at a collection agency. he found that unlike the other jobs described here where employees need to act cheerful and concerned, bill collectors are selected and socialized to show irritation to most debtors. 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 childcare worker at a daycare in nigeria the skills involved in childcare 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. wait staff a waitress taking an order in an american restaurant in her 1991 study of waitresses in philadelphia, paules examines how these workers assert control and protect their self identity during interactions with customers. in restaurant work, paules argues, workers' subordination to customers is reinforced through "cultural symbols that originate from deeply rooted assumptions about service work." because the waitresses were not strictly regulated by their employers, waitresses' interactions with customers were controlled by the waitresses themselves. although they are stigmatized by the stereotypes 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 research, bayard de volo (2003) found that casino 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 and appearance 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 interviews, 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 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 and friendly attitude independent of their own mood or temperament at the time. leidner (1993) suggests that rigid compliance with these expectations is at least potentially damaging to workers' sense of self and identity. 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 or exaggeration to demonstrate their rebellion against the strict regulation of their employee–customer interactions. physicians according to larson and yao (2005), empathy should characterize physicians' interactions with their patients because, despite advancement in medical technology, the interpersonal relationship between physicians and patients remains essential to quality healthcare. 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