Emotional labor or emotion work is a requirement of a job that employees display required emotions toward customers or others.[1] Example professions that require emotional labor are: nurses,[2] doctors,[3] waiting staff,[4] and television actors.[5] However, as particular economies move from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, many more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands when compared to sixty years ago.
The sociologist Arlie Hochschild provides the first
definition of emotional labor, which is a form of emotion regulation that
creates a publicly visible facial and bodily display within the workplace
According to Hochschild (1983), 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.[7]
Hochschild (1983) argues that within this commodification process, service
workers are estranged from their own feelings in the workplace.[1]