Unpaid Work? Emotional Labor Assessments and Episodic Recall Bias in Public Engagement

Abstract

We test individual-level job-related assessments as a function of a public employee’s induced recall of discrete citizen engagement and one’s intrinsic prosocial motivation. We are interested in whether tangible retentions of public service influence the relationship between stated, but abstract, self-concepts—such as reported prosociality. Little is known as to the impact of citizen consultation on local government employees or the outcomes that engagement might induce. We find that the relationship between self-reports of prosociality and pay satisfaction are contingent upon those concepts being decontextualized, whereas discrete recall bias appears not to affect emotional burnout. Meanwhile, when induced recall is positively valanced, it has a positive direct effect on subjects’ willingness toward future citizen engagement. In other words, subjects seem to accept the emotional labor of engagement as part of their jobs. However, contextualizing engagement may make them more cognizant of its unremunerated dimensions; and, positive reinforcement of engagement provides encouragement to further engagement.