Emotional Labor - Definition

Definition

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild provided the first definition of "emotional labor": the

"management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labor is sold for a wage".

The related term emotion work (also called "emotion management") refers to "these same acts done in a private context". Following Hochschild's coining, several conceptualizations of emotional labor have been proposed. Some conceptual ambiguity persists, but each conceptualization has in common the general underlying assumption that emotional labor involves managing emotions so that they are consistent with organizational or occupational display rules, regardless of whether they are discrepant with internal feelings.

According to Hochschild, jobs involving emotional labor are defined as those that:

1. require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public
2. require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person
3. allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees.

Display rules refer to the organizational rules about what kind of emotion to express on the job.