Emotional Labor Demands Research Articles

Parents as psychological coaches

ABSTRACT In this article, we argue that contemporary parenting ideals are characterised by labour-intensive introspective emotional work akin to the techniques used by psychological coaches. We situate these ideals of contemporary parenting in an emotionalized culture that focuses on the production of happy, thriving children that is simultaneously linked to the production of moral subjectivities. We analyse examples from contemporary Danish parenting literature and explore how these ideals of parenting promises both wellbeing and future life success of children. However, we argue that the ideal of parents as psychological coaches exacerbates the demands of emotional labour on parents, consolidates the individualized responsibilisation of parents for the future success of their children, creates a reification of the self and overlooks ethical and existential questions rooted in pedagogical approaches to upbringing.

Going the extra (s)mile: Countermeasures to emotional labour dysregulation in Australian reef tourism

Emotional labour is important to the performance of interactive service work in the tourism industry. However, emotional labour dysregulation, defined as a difficulty in managing emotions in daily routines, may lead to negative outcomes. This study aimed to fill an important gap by gaining a better understanding of perceived countermeasures for effectively managing emotional labour dysregulation in tourism workers. Using snowball sampling to recruit participants, eight focus groups were conducted with 42 reef workers in Cairns (Australia), using a novel scenario-based technique for knowledge elicitation. Findings outline countermeasures to emotional labour dysregulation according to two themes: (1) individual-level strategies, and (2) broader system factors. Both themes deal with the demands of emotional labour. Knowledge about countermeasures to emotional labour dysregulation has the potential to support employees and in turn influence positive tourism experiences which can help the industry to achieve business success and positive customer reviews.

Gender and Emotions at Work: Organizational Rank Has Greater Emotional Benefits for Men than Women

The way people feel is important for how they behave and perform in the workplace. Experiencing more positive−and less negative−emotions at work is often associated with greater status and power. But there may be differences in how men and women feel at work, particularly at different levels in their organizations. Using data from a nation-wide sample of working adults, we examine differences in the emotions that men and women experience at work, how gender interacts with rank to predict emotions, if the association between gender and emotions is accounted for by emotional labor demands, and if this relationship differs according to the proportion of women in an industry or organizational rank. Results demonstrate that women experience emotions associated with disvalue and strain at work more frequently than men and that organizational rank moderates the relationship between gender and several discrete emotions. Some of the effects are partially accounted for by occupational emotion demands, differing by organizational rank and/or the proportion of women employed in an industry.

The Impact of Daily Emotional Labor on Health and Well-Being

Emotional labor research largely focuses on client-facing occupations. However, employees across occupations engage in emotional labor when they perceive that specific types of emotional communication are required to align with organizational expectations. The current two-week daily survey study of 42 employees was conducted at a small website development company to examine relationships between employees’ emotional labor, physical health, and psychological well-being. Results indicated that daily emotional labor surface acting was significantly negatively related to daily psychological well-being and daily physical health. However, daily emotional labor deep acting was not significantly related to daily psychological well-being or daily physical health. After aggregating emotional labor across days, results revealed a significant positive relationship between emotional labor and burnout. This study enhances organizational awareness of the relationship between emotional communication expectations and employees’ psychological and physical health. Research-driven practices are detailed to ameliorate the negative side effects of emotional labor communication demands.

The Ethics of Emotional Labor in Public Service: The Case of Children’s Services Forensic Interviewers

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to reframe child forensic interviewing in terms of emotional labor. Child forensic interviewing practice illustrates a public service function that demands emotional labor yet fails to empower its workers with skills to preserve their personal wellbeing. Under an ethic of care, public servants are not the means to organizational ends. Failing to articulate emotional labor demands fosters occupational stress and burnout. While many studies examine negative psychological outcomes from public service work, few examine the impact on children’s services workers, and even fewer explore emotional labor as a mechanism through which negative outcomes arise.

Surface-acting emotional labor predicts depressive symptoms among health care workers over a 2-year prospective study.

Surface-acting emotional labor (SaEL) is the requirement to hide or suppress felt emotions to achieve acceptable job performance. It is a common feature of jobs featuring interactions with the public, such as customers or patients. Resulting emotional inauthenticity is associated with psychological strain, but there have been few prospective studies of mental health outcomes. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed in 24 skilled nursing facilities at baseline and 23 facilities 2 years later. Permanent full-time and part-time employees in all jobs were eligible to participate. Respondents in these analyses provided survey information on the frequency of SaEL at baseline and depressive symptoms on both occasions. Those without depression at baseline were deemed at risk. Multivariable logistic regression modeling estimated adjusted odds ratios (aOR) for SaEL, other job features, and demographic characteristics. A total of 939 eligible participants had no depression at baseline; 15% developed depressive symptoms. About two-thirds were direct care providers, including 38% nursing and medical assistants. Adjusted for potential confounders, workers with intermediate and high SaEL had a higher risk (aORs around 2). Symptom onset was also predicted by high work-family conflict, younger age and low decision latitude at work. In this prospective study of long-term care workers, those who reported experiencing high SaEL at the time of the baseline survey were at higher risk of developing depressive symptoms 2 years later. Both exposure and outcome could have suffered some misclassification. Future studies should examine a broader range of strategies for coping with emotional labor demands.

Emotional labor and work engagement at work in military policemen

This study aimed to analyse relations between emotional labor strategies and demands and work engagement in a sample of 302 military policemen. Instruments were the Emotional Labour Scale — ELS, Emotion Work Requirements Scale — EWRS and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale — UWES. Predictive Power of emotional labor dimensions were tested through multiple regression analyses. Demands of expressing negative emotions and demands of intensity and variability did not show statistical significant correlation with engagement. Demands of expressing positive emotions to-ward victims, superiors and other policemen, as well as the deep action strategy were both posi-tive predictors, unlike superficial action strategy was a negative predictor of engagement at work. The study gives contributions to differentiate emotional demands according to interaction target group, deepens the understanding of military policemen emotional work and its relation to work engagement, underlyning the relevance of socioemotional competences development among these profesionals.

Teacher’s emotional labor demands: a study in a federal educational institution

The objective of this study was to characterize teachers' emotional labor by identifying and map-ping the emotional demands in the context of professional and technological teaching. Data col-lection was carried out in two stages: documentary research and focus group technique with the participation of six managers and six teachers. We adopted inductive analysis for the documentary corpus, with the support of the Atlas.ti software, and a deductive system of codification and open categorization for the analysis of the corpus of the focus groups. Eight emotional demands were grouped in three macro categories: interactional, technical-pedagogical, and intrapersonal. In-teractive affective events strongly mobilize teachers, especially when it comes to inappropriate student behavior. It is concluded that the emotional demands of the teacher-student interaction require greater preparation of the teachers to sustain their performance and to maintain their well-being.

The Impact of Workplace Harassment on Health in a Working Cohort.

Background: Workplace abuse, including sexual harassment, is frequently experienced worldwide and is related to adverse mental health outcomes, and injuries. Flight attendants are an understudied occupational group and are susceptible to harassment due to working in a feminized, client-facing occupation with few protections or sanctioned responses against aggressive behaviors.Objective: We investigated the relationship between workplace abuse and health in a cohort of cabin crew. We also aimed to characterize perpetrator profiles.Methods: We conducted our study among 4,459U.S. and Canada-based participants from the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study using multivariate logistic regression. Our exposures of interest were episodes of workplace abuse in the past year. We evaluated several mental and physical health outcomes, including depression, fatigue, musculoskeletal injuries, and general workplace injuries.Results: We report that exposures to verbal abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are common among cabin crew, with 63, 26, and 2% of respondents, respectively, reporting harassment in the past year alone. Workplace abuse was associated with depression, sleep disturbances, and musculoskeletal injuries among male and female crew, with a trend toward increasing odds ratios (ORs) given a higher frequency of events. For example, sexual harassment was related to an increased odds for depression (OR = 1.91, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.51–2.30), which increased in a dose response-like manner among women reporting harassment once (OR = 1.44, 95% CI: 0.93–1.95), 2–3 times (OR = 1.83, 95% CI: 1.29–2.38), and 4 or more times (OR = 4.12, 95% CI: 3.18–5.06). We found that passengers were the primary perpetrators of abuse.Conclusions: Our study is the first to comprehensively characterize workplace abuse and harassment and its relation to health in a largely female customer-facing workforce. The strong associations with health outcomes observed in our study highlights the question of how workplace policies can be altered to mitigate prevalent abuses. Clinicians could also consider how jobs with high emotional labor demands may predispose people to adverse health outcomes, educate patients regarding their psychological/physical responses and coping strategies, and be aware of signs of distress in patients working in such occupations in order to direct them to the appropriate treatments and therapies.

Organizational factors related to attracting job seekers higher in hardiness

AbstractBuilding an organization of workers who thrive in demanding environments begins with recruitment of workers with personality traits predictive of resilience. We integrate fit theories to determine how job advertisement information may attract job seekers higher in psychological hardiness (sense of control, feelings of commitment to many things in life, perceptions of challenge). Across two studies, we manipulated hypothetical job advertisements that were presented to current workers seeking new employment. Job seekers higher in hardiness were more attracted to working with hardy coworkers, less attracted to coping resources, and more attracted to high emotional labor demands compared to job seekers lower in hardiness. A discussion for how organizations may craft job advertisement content to improve their recruitment efforts is provided.

The Role of Job Demands⁻Resources (JDR) between Service Workers' Emotional Labor and Burnout: New Directions for Labor Policy at Local Government.

Recently, research on service workers’ emotional labor has received considerable attention, both in theory and practice. Emotional labor has been reported to cause both stress and burnout in service workers, eventually leading to a decrease in organizational productivity. In this context, there is also a growing interest in identifying ways to reduce such burnout. This study aimed to examine the influence of emotional labor and job demands–resources (JD–R) on service workers’ burnout. Specifically, we analyzed the direct, indirect, and moderating effects of JD–R on burnout. Data were collected from service workers (N = 1517) in public sectors. Results revealed that three dimensions—emotional labor, intensity/variety, and surface acting—increase burnout, whereas deep acting decreases it. Additionally, job demands were found to increase burnout, while job resources decreased it. Among the job demands, customer contact had the greatest positive impact on burnout, followed by role ambiguity and workload, respectively. Among the job resources, self-efficacy and social support had the greatest negative impact on burnout. Finally, customer contact, role ambiguity, job autonomy, and social support were identified as moderators that worsened or buffered the impact of emotional labor on burnout.

“That’s What the Money’s for”: Alienation and Emotional Labor in Public Service

As the face of government, street-level bureaucrats interact with the citizenry and engage in emotional labor. Here we argue that public servants risk becoming alienated due to the unsupported emotional labor demands of their jobs. Alienated public servants can, in turn, alienate citizens from their government via emotional contagion, and because targets of emotional labor can detect inauthentic surface acting, they will distrust encounters with government as a result. Human resource management practices and organizational structures can mitigate or exacerbate this effect. The problem, though, is that public service is rooted in scientific management, which reifies top-down hierarchy, increasing the likelihood of alienation through its commitment to the bureaucratic form. By extending emotional labor theory to self-estrangement and fellow-beings estrangement, our argument incorporates all four of Marx’s dimensions of alienation, including commodity fetishism, where people are things and feelings qua feelings are part of an overall public service delivery package.

Role of Religion and Spirituality in Stress Management Among Nurses

Religion and spirituality play a significant role as coping resources under stressful circumstances. Nursing professionals confront with a variety of stressors repeatedly and are found to employ religious/spiritual coping techniques in managing the negative impact of work stress. The present review explores different religious and spiritual coping strategies utilized by nurses of different socio-cultural and religious backgrounds and highlights the importance of treating religion and spirituality as two separate entities in studying their stress-buffering effect. The MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PsycArticles databases and Google Scholar were searched from 2006 to 2017 with the key words nursing, stress, religious coping, religiosity and spirituality. Various notions of the divine/transcendent aspect of life have led to lack of consensus over a functional definition of religion as well as spirituality. This is found to be the core element of methodological inadequacy in studying individuals’ reliance on religion and spirituality during stress. Further, most of the existing measures do not adequately explore spirituality as a construct independent of religion. Measures should be more culture sensitive to discover culturally enriched religious practices and rituals adopted by individuals belonging to different socio-cultural milieu to overcome stress. The role of religion and spirituality in stress resilience, emotion regulation and burnout among nurses around the globe needs further empirical support. Multiple levels at which religious and spiritual coping may moderate/mediate the relationship between work stress and behavioral/emotional outcomes among human service personnel who face high emotional labor demands should be more comprehensively analyzed.

Personal resources and selected employees outcomes - does performing emotional labour moderate the relationship

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between personality traits, core self-evaluation, emotional intelligence and positive employee outcomes (PO) in the context of specific demands of emotional labour. Research sample consisted of 309 workers, 170 of whom performed emotional labour. The following tools were used in the study: the Polish adaptation of the NEO-FFI, the core self-evaluation scale, the INTE questionnaire for assessing the level of emotional intelligence and an own tool for the measurement of positive employee outcomes. From among the analysed variables, all of them proved to be significantly correlated to achieving positive employee outcomes. The most important result of the conducted analyses is demonstrating the moderation effect that performing EL has on certain relationships. Moderation can be observed only in the case of positive outcomes that benefits for the organisation regarding: neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness.

Emotional labor actors, well-being, and objective performance

To manage the emotional labor demands, employees may primarily rely on one strategy or the other while they may use surface and deep acting in conjunction. However, most research on emotional labor have investigated how two emotional labor strategies function to predict employee well-being separately. This variable-centered perspective is difficult to capture subpopulations of employees who may differ in their combined use of surface and deep acting. Using latent profile analysis, the current study examined potential emotional labor profiles from a person-centered perspective. We identified 5 emotional labor profiles: trying yet faking, some faking, high deep actors, high regulators, and moderates. Also this profiles differently predicted employee well-being (emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction) and objective performance (new sales and member increase). The present study captured the particular conditions in which emotional labor may lead to positive or negative outcomes for employees and organizations.

Emotional labor actors, well-being, and objective performance: A Latent Profile Analysis of Emotional Labor Strategies

To manage the emotional labor demands, employees may primarily rely on one strategy or the other while they may use surface and deep acting in conjunction. However, most research on emotional labor have investigated how two emotional labor strategies function to predict employee well-being separately. This variable-centered perspective is difficult to capture subpopulations of employees who may differ in their combined use of surface and deep acting. Using latent profile analysis, the current study examined potential emotional labor profiles from a person-centered perspective. We identified 5 emotional labor profiles: trying yet faking, some faking, high deep actors, high regulators, and moderates. Also this profiles differently predicted employee well-being (emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction) and objective performance (new sales and member increase). The present study captured the particular conditions in which emotional labor may lead to positive or negative outcomes for employees and organizations.

Are the emotionally intelligent good citizens or counterproductive? A meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and its relationships with organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior

This research project examines whether emotional intelligence (EI) is related to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). A key question concerns the degree to which EI is related to OCB and CWB after controlling for other established predictors. The study uses meta-analytical summaries of existing research (for EI-OCB, k=68, N=16,386; for EI-CWB, k=17, N=3914). It uses meta-analytical controls to obtain the best estimates of effect sizes, incremental validity, and relative importance. This meta-analysis found that EI is positively associated with OCB and negatively related to CWB. When controlling for ability measures of EI, the Big Five personality measures, general self-efficacy, cognitive intelligence, and self-rated performance, both self-report measures of EI and mixed competency measures of EI show incremental validity and relative importance in predicting OCB and CWB. An analysis of self-report EI found that the effects of EI on OCB and CWB are stronger in health care and service industries than in industries where emotional labor demands are lower. The results imply that organizations can increase OCB and reduce CWB by recruiting employees high in EI and by training employees in emotional competencies.

Racialized and Classed Contexts: Shifting Audiences and Changes in Emotional Labor Among Restaurant Servers

This ethnographic study examines the importance of context in the emotional labor of restaurant servers. While the emotional labor of workers in the service industry has been studied extensively, little attention has been paid to the differing audiences and demands of restaurant servers in the front‐ and backstages and the ways these spaces and performances are racialized and classed. Relying on organizational materials, face‐to‐face interviews, and participant observation conducted from September through December 2013, this article addresses this gap. Findings indicate that the emotional labor that servers engage in the frontstage is processed in backstage spaces where servers interact out of earshot of customers. In this space, servers mitigate the stress associated with the emotional labor demands from the frontstage by relying on racialized and classed discourse about their customers, processes that may, in turn, contribute to the reproduction of social hierarchies.

College Student-Athletes’ Communicative Negotiation of Emotion Labor

Not only are college student-athletes expected to excel on the field and in the classroom, but, as reflections of their university, they must abide by codes of conduct that govern their emotions and communicative behaviors. Interviews of Division I athletes at an academically and athletically elite U.S. university uncovered that similar to employees in the retail and hospitality industries, who are paid to express particular emotions, student-athletes also had to perform emotional labor in order to meet institutional demands. Unlike paid workers, however, student-athletes are considered amateurs and do not receive a salary, and their behaviors are scrutinized most of the day, particularly if they are high-profile players. Despite the powerlessness, frustration, and nervousness student-athletes felt, they were expected to express mental toughness and gratitude. Participants coped with emotional labor demands by turning backstage and relying on teammates for social support. In addition to extending emotional labor research to a new context, this study offers several practical applications, underscoring the need for university athletics departments to prepare and assist student-athletes with the performance and negotiation of emotional labor.

Protecting tourism labor? Sustainable labels and private governance

This paper examines the application of private governance through certification labels and industry initiatives in the tourism industry. These efforts are sold as a way to achieve decent working conditions for tourism workers who participate in global value chains in the global South. The question at hand is, are these mechanisms an effective way to support tourism labor? Specifically, this research documents two main findings. First, I evaluate the programs through a tourism global value chain approach and demonstrate how tour operators use language about sustainability and the certification of accommodation suppliers for brand product differentiation and marketing. My findings demonstrate that these programs do not support tourism workers. Second, even with certification and recommendations, the standards are limited and do not include measures to protect against precarious employment, gendered divisions of labor, and emotional labor demands. Thus, these initiatives do not fully protect tourism workers. Finally, I argue a new governance research approach focused on workers’ rights and empowerment provides insights into achieving a more equitable international tourism landscape. This has implications for a governance analysis focused on rights and ‘synergistic’ governance strategies.