Forms of Emotional Labor
Employees can display organizationally-desired emotions by acting out the emotion. Such acting can take two forms:
- surface acting, involves "painting on" affective displays, or faking; Surface acting involves an employee's (presenting emotions on his or her "surface" without actually feeling them. The employee in this case puts on a facade as if the emotions are felt, like a "personal").
- deep acting wherein they modify their inner feelings to match the emotion expressions the organization requires.
Though both forms of acting are internally false, they represent different intentions. That is, when engaging in deep acting, an actor attempts to modify feelings to match the required displays, in order to seem authentic to the audience ("faking in good faith"); in surface acting, the alternative strategy, employees modify their displays without shaping inner feelings. They conform to the display rules in order to keep the job, not to help the customer or the organization, ("faking in bad faith").
Deep acting is argued to be associated with reduced stress and an increased sense of personal accomplishment; whereas surface acting is associated with increased stress, emotional exhaustion, depression, and a sense of inauthenticity.
In 1983, Arlie Russell Hochschild, who wrote about emotional labor, coined the term emotional dissonance to describe this process of "maintaining a difference between feeling and feigning".
Read more about this topic: Emotional Labor
Famous quotes containing the words forms of, forms, emotional and/or labor:
“For forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate’er is best administered is best.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“When men and women across the country reported how happy they felt, researchers found that jugglers were happier than others. By and large, the more roles, the greater the happiness. Parents were happier than nonparents, and workers were happier than nonworkers. Married people were much happier than unmarried people. Married people were generally at the top of the emotional totem pole.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)