Emotional Labor Research Articles

Emotional labor and absenteeism among early childhood educators: The mediating roles of negative affect and psychological meaningfulness

Emotional labor and absenteeism among early childhood educators: The mediating roles of negative affect and psychological meaningfulness

Emotional Labour in the Neoliberal University: The Standpoint of Female Academics in Norway with Experience of Sick Leave

ABSTRACT In this article, we show how female academics who have been on sick leave hide feelings of exhaustion, fear, and a lack of control and change these feelings into expressions of control and engagement when interacting with students and colleagues. We contend that these emotional efforts are a response to the emotional culture of the university in which vocation and commitment to teaching and research have become entangled with neoliberal management trends. Within this context, academic performance and student satisfaction are measured and evaluated. We use Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour and the literature on the emotional culture of universities under neoliberal management to illuminate how emotional labour takes place in neoliberal academia and argue that this type of work is gendered. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research on gendered emotional labour in the neoliberal academy and add to our understanding of how this form of management affects the emotional lives of those working there.

Teachers’ Emotional Labor: A Systematic Review

Emotional labor refers to the process by which employees are required to regulate their emotions in accordance with professionally specified requirements, rules, and guidelines. In the context of teaching, a significant portion of work is dedicated to the emotional labor of the teachers. Teaching, as a multifaceted profession, encompasses cognitive as well as emotional dimensions. Teachers consistently engage in emotional labor as an essential component of achieving pedagogical objectives and fostering positive learning outcomes. This review aimed to examine the emotional labor of elementary and high school teachers. The study was guided by four key questions: (1) What are the emotional labor levels of the teachers? (2) How do teachers engage in emotional labor in terms of surface acting and deep acting? (3) What is the relationship between naturally felt emotions and surface acting and deep acting? (4) What are the remaining gaps in the literature regarding the study of emotional labor, surface acting, and deep acting among teachers in elementary and high schools? We systematically selected ten articles relevant to our objective to confirm the components related to teachers’ emotional labor, with a specific focus on surface acting, deep acting, and naturally felt emotions in elementary and high school teachers. A comprehensive database search was conducted, in adherence to the PRISMA statement, to locate relevant studies investigating “teachers’ emotional labor” and synthesizing surface acting and deep acting. The PICOS approach was used to refine research inquiries and formulate search terms. Overall, the literature review highlights notable associations between surface acting and deep acting. However, there is no conclusive evidence that shows the correlation between deep acting and naturally felt emotions. There is considerable room for improving our understanding of emotional labor, including study methodologies, explored variables, and the recognition of historical and cultural influences that moderate and mediate the dynamics of emotional labor. This systematic review sought to delineate and consolidate existing research insights on teachers’ emotional labor.

The Treatment Alliance and the Provision of Removable Dentures: Exploring the Emotional Work of the Dental Team

Background: Research has demonstrated that the loss of one or more natural teeth can be an emotionally traumatic experience that mirrors processes associated with bereavement. There remains scant literature examining the role of emotions in dental encounters. One such exception is the literature on the idea of the ‘treatment alliance’ in dental encounters. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of the ‘treatment alliance’ in dentist–patient encounters. Methods: Data were collected from clinical observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups exploring the experience of tooth loss and how the treatment alliance shaped the patient journey. Data analysis was conducted using the grounded theory method influenced by phenomenology. Coding was conducted using NVIVO and the unit of analysis was the treatment alliance. Results: Twenty participants took part in the interviews (eleven male; nine female; 22–86 years; mean age = 58.9 years). Observations were carried out with a further fourteen participants (seven male; seven female; 50–101 years; mean age = 62.2 years). The paper draws on four cases taken from the observational data to illustrate important dynamics underpinning how the treatment alliance varied. These case studies are then used as the basis for a critical discussion of the importance of the treatment alliance in dentistry. Conclusions: The treatment alliance acted as an important moderator in the clinical encounter, helping to influence successful outcomes. An important foundational component of the treatment alliance was the degree of emotional work the dental team conducted when ‘getting to know’ unfamiliar patients. Whilst emotions were an important factor in dental encounters, their acknowledgement and management were not essential to all successful outcomes. Much more research is therefore needed into the role of emotional labour in dental encounters.

How do working conditions change for in-person versus digital work? The case of schoolteachers

Abstract Background Telework has significantly increased in Europe and internationally in the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns, with estimates of 22% of Europeans now doing some form of telework. However, it is unclear how working conditions for the same job differ when work is conducted in-person versus digitally, and if occupational health risks can be considered as equal across formats. Our study addressed the profession of school teaching to examine online working conditions versus those for in-person teaching. Methods To allow for close consideration of employment contexts, a qualitative study was conducted. Focus groups and interviews took place in 2023-24 with 45 teachers and tutors who teach from kindergarten to secondary grades across Canada. Results We found that online teaching added to emotional labour of teaching work and involved new occupational exposures. These included challenges with engaging students via cameras and microphones, digital surveillance of teachers by parents and students, unwanted exposure to students’ intimate home lives, and technostress. Conclusions The work of being an online teacher was very different than teaching in-person, yet there has been slow recognition of working condition differences for understanding of OHS exposures and for collective agreements. Key messages • In the context of a significant expansion of telework, assumptions cannot be made that the job conditions and exposures are the same job when performed in-person or at-home. • These differences will need to be recognized in job agreements and occupational risk assessments.

Moving the Debate Forward: A Cross‐Sectional Study Examining Marxist and Interactionalist Perspectives of Emotional Labor in Teaching

ABSTRACTThe Marxist perspective asserts that teachers' emotional labor is alienating because it is prescribed by institutional forces such as external accountability, leading to burnout. However, the interactionist perspective disagrees with this perspective; it posits that teachers possess subjectivity, such as a sense of calling, which enables them to intentionally manage their emotions to achieve self‐actualization. Thus, this study aims to contribute to the debate by examining the relationships amongst teachers' emotional labor, external accountability, sense of calling, and burnout in China. The findings reveal (1) a negative relationship between external accountability and burnout that is mediated by various forms of emotional labor and (2) a significant moderation effect of a sense of calling on the relationship between external accountability and emotional labor. The findings generally support the internationalist perspective but show that the Marxist perspective may be applicable in explaining emotional labor amongst teachers with a weak sense of calling.

RADIOGRAPHERS AND EMPATHY - A LITERATURE REVIEW

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to introduce the concept of empathy in the radiographer profession. We explored why empathy is an important component of the radiographer, the positive impact of empathy on patients and radiographers, the negative impact of empathy on radiographers, how to introduce empathy into the workplace, and what infl uence the expression or non-expression of empathy has on radiographers. Materials and methods: We searched for the following keywords: empathy, emotional labour, radiological engineer, empathy, radiographer, radiologic technologist, burnout in radiography. Articles published from 1991 onwards were considered and only articles in Slovene and English with full text availability were included. Results: 13 articles were included in the analysis, which are summarised in a table. Empathy is a fundamental tool for building a therapeutic relationship between radiographers and patients and contributes to a better diagnostic quality of the examination. Empathy has a positive infl uence on therapeutic outcomes and on radiographers, as it can help to reduce stress and burnout in the workplace and improve the quality of life of professionals. However, constant exposure to stressful and emotionally diffi cult situations can have emotional and motivational consequences, such as empathic anxiety and personal distress. Understanding patients' emotions, opinions and experiences, helps radiographers to assess their needs and act accordingly. Conclusion: Empathy plays an important role in the work of radiographers as it contributes to a better relationship with the patient and helps to improve the diagnostic and therapeutic quality of the examination. Keywords: empathic care, burnout, empathic training, radiographers

Black Women in Medical Education Publishing: Bibliometric and Testimonio Accounts Using Intersectionality Methodology.

Black women in academic medicine experience racial and gender discrimination, all while being tasked with improving a flawed system. Representation of Black women in medicine remains low, yet they bear the burden of fostering diversity and mentoring trainees, exacerbating their minority tax and emotional labor, and negatively impacting career progression. To complement qualitative accounts of Black women authors in the medical education literature with a quantitative account of their representation. We used statistical modeling to estimate the representation of Black women authors in medical education publishing as compared to other groups. An intersectional methodology employing bibliometric analysis and testimonio reflection. US-based authors of journal articles published in medical education journals between 2000 and 2020. Author race was determined using a probability-based algorithm incorporating US Census data, and author gender was ascribed using Social Security Administration records. We conducted two negative binomial generalized linear models by first and last author publications. Metadata for each article was retrieved from Web of Science and PubMed to include author names, country of institutional affiliation, and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Results were contextualized via the "testimonio" account of a Black woman author. Of 21,945 unique authors, Black women (and other racially minoritized groups) published far fewer first and last author papers than white women and men. In addition, major MeSH terms used by Black women authors reveal little overlap with highly ranked medical education topics. The testimonio further narrated struggles with belonging and racial identity. This study revealed that Black women are underrepresented in medical education publishing. We believe that dismantling oppressive structures in the publishing ecosystem and the field is imperative for achieving equity. Additionally, further experiential accounts are needed to contextualize this quantitative account and understand underrepresentation in medical education publishing.

China’s Far West Program: An ecological exploration into student teachers' emotion labor in voluntary rural teaching practices

This study examines the emotional landscapes experienced by student teachers participating in voluntary teaching practices within rural settings, specifically focusing on China's Far West Program (CFWP, Xibujihua). Grounded in an ecological perspective, this study unravels complex emotional incidents through semi-structured interviews with ten student teachers, which happened at micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono levels, and get intertwined with individual agency and ecological contexts. The findings highlight both static expressions and dynamic processes of voluntary educators' emotional experiences. “Proactively regulating emotions” and “passively being regulated” emerged as two predominant themes, calling for greater support for within rural voluntary teaching communities.

Psychological Distress and Associated Factors Among Elementary School Teachers: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Teachers can face demanding and stressful working conditions. Classroom environments in elementary schools are dynamic and challenging, which can be mentally and emotionally exhausting for teachers. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of psychological distress and identify associated factors among elementary school teachers. This is an analytical, observational cross-sectional study. The participants consisted of 450 teachers selected using the cluster sampling method from elementary schools of Tabriz, Iran. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the associations between teachers' psychological distress and potential factors. The study found a significant proportion of participants (54.2%) experiencing psychological distress. Multiple regression analysis revealed age, sex, work experience, school type, family income status, teachers' efficacy, emotional labor, and presenteeism were statistically associated with teachers' psychological distress. To address teachers' psychological distress, schools need to adopt policies that promote teacher well-being and mental health support. The high prevalence of psychological distress among elementary school teachers raises concerns and highlights the need for attention. Schools and administrators must provide teachers with the resources and support they need to succeed in their roles. Interventions targeting the identified associated factors must be planned to improve the mental health of elementary school teachers and enhance their overall performance.

Psychosocial risk factors of lower urinary tract symptoms among working women.

Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are prevalent among women, affecting not only their physical well-being but also their quality of working life. This study aimed to assess the relationship between psychosocial factors at work and LUTS among working women. Additionally, we sought to investigate whether women with psychosocial risk factors at work reported reduced quality of life (QOL) and a higher degree of productivity loss from absenteeism and presenteeism. An online survey was conducted to collect the demographic characteristics, occupational risk factors, and LUTS among employed Korean women. Shift work, weekly working hours, occupational stress, and emotional labor were surveyed as psychosocial risk factors at work. The association between psychosocial risk factors and LUTS was assessed using adjusted logistic regression. The relationships between psychosocial risk factors and LUTS-related outcomes, such as were examined using a generalized linear model. Of the 1057 participants, 260 (24.6%) and 294 (27.81%) had overactive bladder and urinary incontinence, respectively. Job stress, emotional labor, and night-shift work are significantly associated with a higher prevalence of LUTS, which reduce workers' QOL and labor productivity through absenteeism and presenteeism due to urination symptoms. Psychosocial factors at work, particularly job stress, emotional labor, and night-shift work, were significantly associated with a higher prevalence of LUTS, leading to reduced QOL and labor productivity due to urination symptoms.

The Role of Affective Labour in Expertise: Bringing Emotions Back into Expert Practices

In recent years, a lot of scholarly attention has been devoted to how practices of digitalisation and datafication require medical professionals to work together with different stakeholders, and to how such collaborations shape expertise (Stevens, Wehrens, and de Bont 2020; Carboni et al. 2024). STS scholars have generally approached expertise as an epistemic and social endeavor, but they have tended to neglect the role affects and emotions play in its development and performance. In this paper, we provide a theoretical reflection on the relation between affective labour and expertise building upon Egher’s (2023) conceptualisation of expertise as a practical achievement realised through coordination and affective labour. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various medical settings, including digital pathology, psychiatry, and datafication in intensive care, we explore what types of affective labour are conducted in digital healthcare, by whom, and with what consequences. We show how affective labour mediates both epistemic and relational practices. We argue that different affects and emotions are mobilised in these practices, which impacts the development and effective performance of expertise.

Emotional Labor in Dementia Research.

The concept of emotional labor refers to the regulation and management of emotions within the workplace. This labor may involve a dissonance between the emotions that are internally felt and the emotions that can be externally expressed. The concept of emotional labor can be applied to the emotional management that occurs during research often when directly interacting with research participants. These emotions can have a positive role in building rapport and enabling the researcher to understand the participant's world. But equally, it can lead to emotional strain and potentially have a negative impact on researcher well-being. In this paper, we apply the concept of emotional labor to dementia research. While there has been attention paid to ethical issues in dementia research, this has often focused on the impact on the participant and not the researcher. Within this paper, we first draw on the literature to provide an overview of the role of emotional labor in the research context. Within the literature, we identify nine research scenarios where emotional labor might occur within dementia research. We then present three case studies illuminating our experiences of emotional labor within dementia research. These case studies provide illustrative examples of some of the research scenarios identified in the literature. To synthesize the learning from the literature and our case studies, we propose peer-critiqued recommendations for managing emotional labor in dementia research. We conclude by considering the implications for other health researchers.

‘I Still Have Tears in My Eyes’: A Situational Psychological Approach of Teachers' Emotional Labour in Special Needs Education

‘I Still Have Tears in My Eyes’: A Situational Psychological Approach of Teachers' Emotional Labour in Special Needs Education

Local Meanings of Peace: The Politics of Words and Emotional Labor among Civil Society Practitioners in Armenia and Turkey

Abstract Despite their long-lasting work in Armenia and Turkey, peacebuilding practitioners of civil society have an ambivalent relationship with the term peace and refrain from defining their role as peacebuilders. Informed by the anthropological research adopting the local turn in peace and conflict studies, we explore how civil society practitioners in Armenia and Turkey perceive the concept of “peace” (խաղաղություն or khaghaghutyun in Armenian and barış in Turkish) and how they position themselves regarding the meanings they attach to this term. In this paper, we present data collected through semi-structured interviews with civil society practitioners from both countries, investigating the perceptions and practices in the aftermath of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. We found that the flexibility of the term normalization in comparison to peacebuilding is preferred among civil society practitioners working for the Armenia-Turkey dialogue. We also show that the political context shapes local meanings of the word peace. While in Turkey, the authoritarian regime, restrictions on NGOs, and rise of ultranationalism make open advocacy for peace with Armenia difficult and risky, the war with Azerbaijan firmly structures where and how the word peace can be used in Armenia – even though it is not clear what is meant by it in either case. Finally, our research points out a neglected aspect of professionalism in this context and shows how it requires emotional labor to suppress enthusiasm and hope for peace. We close our paper with a call for further research among the youth and exploration of effective communication, alternative approaches, and terminologies that can foster meaningful dialogue and reconciliation without provoking divisive sentiments.

노인복지시설종사자의 감정노동과 돌봄서비스 질의 관계에서 직무스트레스의 매개효과

Objectives This study seeks to verify the effect of job stress on the impact of emotional labor of workers at elderly welfare facilities on the quality of care services. Through this, the purpose was to provide basic data for the development and intervention of education and counseling programs to reduce emotional labor and job stress that affect the quality of care services. Methods For this purpose, 94 workers at elderly welfare facilities in the Daegu area were selected as research subjects and data were collected. The collected data were subjected to reliability analysis, frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, and correlation analysis using SPSS 23 0. Regression analysis and Sobel Test were conducted to verify the mediation effect. Results First, the average of emotional labor was 3.004 out of 5, the average of care service quality was 3.898 out of 5, and the average of job stress was 2.667 out of 5. Second, emotional labor was found to have a significant negative effect on the quality of care services and a positive effect on job stress, and job stress was found to have a negative effect on the quality of care services. Third, job stress was found to mediate the relationship between emotional labor and quality of care services. Conclusions This study proved that job stress is an important mediating factor in the relationship between the emotional labor of elderly welfare facility workers and the quality of care services. By verifying the major variables that affect the quality of care services for workers at elderly welfare facilities, we provided implications for the development of education and counseling programs to reduce emotional labor and job stress that can increase the quality of care services.

Psychological hardiness, social support, and emotional labor among nurses in Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey study

BackgroundOur study of nurses in Tehran was conducted in June of 2020, when the lockdown from the pandemic had been implemented. Nurses had been faced with how to effectively manage their own emotion responses during patientcare. ObjectivesOur study aims to evaluate how psychological and social resources were jointly related to the use of emotional labor through surface acting and deep acting among nurses at public hospitals. DesignThe study design was a single-wave, cross-sectional self-report questionnaire survey containing validated measures where the nurses reported on their work experiences during the pandemic. SettingsThe participants came from five out of 50 public hospitals within Tehran. ParticipantsOf the 250 nurses chosen by using multi-stage randomly sampling, 224 were retained after listwise deletion of missing data and outliers. MethodThrough a survey questionnaire, participants responded to scale measures of psychological hardiness, social support, and emotional labor to investigate the joint impact of hardiness and social support on emotional labor. Their responses provided information on the (1) validity and reliability of all variables, and (2) the hypothesized structural relations, using SPSS-AMOS 22 software. ResultsChallenge and control were related to social support; coworker sympathy and supervisory support were related to surface acting; coworker sympathy was related to deep acting. Under strong support, high hardiness was most negatively related to surface acting and positively related to deep acting. ConclusionThrough coworker and supervisory support, hardiness became an effective means for nurses to regulate their own emotions during interactions to enhance patientcare.

Towards epistemological pluralism and methodological openness in language teacher emotion research

In recent years the notion of emotional labor or emotion labor has gained prominence as an analytically robust concept to explore language teacher emotions in both western and non-western educational settings. The first aim of this article is to examine the applicability of a western concept of emotion labor to the study of language teacher emotions in the Global South/s. Through a comparative case study, we examine how Ecuadorian English-language and Kichwa-language teachers managed emotions while undertaking virtual teaching at the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic. While emotion labor was useful for explaining the former's reported experiences, for the latter, it was only through the Indigenous concept of corazonar rooted in Andean philosophy and cosmology that we could capture their drastically differing accounts. From the perspective of Epistemologies of the South, we argue for a locally sensitive way of theorizing language teacher emotions. We also aim to illustrate the significance of casing and recasing (i.e., a recursive process of linking developing ideas and the evidence that researchers gather) in language teacher emotion research through the investigation of our own analytical processes.

Pothum Janakummah Ragaviah’s “Fairy-land”: A “Hindoo Lady of Madras” in Victorian London

ABSTRACT In Pothum Janakummah Ragaviah's Pictures of England (1876) (the first known English account of a female Indian traveller's experiences of England and Europe), London represented a stage of realist mobilities of her person and her social and aesthetic identities – a privilege otherwise inaccessible to a swarming majority of nineteenth-century South Asians. The Pictures elucidates a political paradigm when elite (including Brahminical) Indian sensibilities were divided between two potentially incompatible drives. One was to enunciate their will to reform hierarchical inequities of Hindu and Indian society from within, without colonial support. The other was to ally with selective models of Anglican sensibilities, which could invariably prolong such inequities through means other than religion and caste. Nevertheless, the Pictures can still be considered an important specimen to highlight the coproduction of Victoriana by non-British factors, in a kind of unremunerated affective labour of placemaking by Indians of the nineteenth-century imperial capital.

The Effect of Emotional Labour on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment among Ayurveda Physicians in Sri Lanka

Similar to other medical specialities, Ayurvedic physicians have a distinct set of duties and responsibilities, with patient interaction playing a big role. In interpersonal interactions with patients, Ayurvedic physicians need to control their emotions. Emotional labour (EL) is the term used to describe the extreme patience and emotional control required to provide effective patient care. Previous researchers have not given adequate attention to studying the effect of EL on-job satisfaction (JS) and organizational commitment (OC), of Ayurvedic physicians. This research attempts to explore the effect of EL on JS and thereby OC, particularly among Ayurveda physicians in Sri Lanka. Primary data was gathered using multistage sampling from 331 Ayurvedic physicians in Sri Lanka for a structured questionnaire. The Partial Least Squires Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) was utilized to analyse the data, with the support of SmartPLS software. The results revealed that EL has a positive influence on OC while EL positively affects JS. The results further confirmed that JS has a positive effect on OC. Finally, the findings demonstrated that JS plays a partially mediating function in the connection between EL and OC. These findings help the advancement of existing knowledge by providing empirical evidence in the context of Ayurvedic physicians in Sri Lanka. Healthcare administrators and policymakers should pay attention to improving emotional labour, job happiness, and organizational commitment of Ayurvedic physicians to enhance patient care efficiency.