Engaging In Emotional Labor

The management of the feelings and expressions is a part of emotional labor. If your job requires you to serve customers, clients, or the public, your employer is asking that you engage in what sociologists call emotional labor (Ferrante, Joan). “Emotional labor is an element of work activity in which the worker is required to display certain emotions in order to complete work tasks in the way required by an employe.” (Organizing and Managing Work, Tony J.Watson, 2002). According to Mastracci et al. (2011), to engage in emotional labor is not only simply to act with emotions at the forefront, but to recognize the way in which emotions influence outcomes in terms of service. “Emotional labor shares similarities as well as differences with physical
According to wikipedia.org, 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. Even if people fail at managing an emotion, their efforts are still influenced by social expectations — (Seeing Sociology: An Introduction). According to study.com, there are two specific types of emotional labor, and they are called deep acting and surface acting. Deep acting is about a person trying to feel a specific emotion that they are thinking about in their mind. Surface acting, however, is when a person has to fake emotion to meet certain social or work rules. Emotional labor is an indicator of how employees can handle adversity at work if they let their emotions hurt their work. As social beings, individuals display certain emotions irrespective of their emotions. Also a part of their occupation individuals perform emotional labor (Sushanta Kumar Mishra). As emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirement of a job, it is similar to many concepts like deception, impression management, and dramaturgy