How Much Emotional Labour Does Your Job Take?
The smile you put on, the patience you manufacture, and what it costs
Many jobs pay you not only for what you do but for how you appear while doing it: calm with the angry customer, warm with the nervous patient, enthusiastic in the tenth meeting of the day. The sociologist who named this in 1983 called it emotional labour. Research since then has found that how you do it matters more than how much: faking a feeling and genuinely working yourself into it have very different costs.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think about your current or most recent job, especially the parts where you deal with clients, patients, pupils, the public or colleagues.
What it measures
Four parts of emotional labour: the display demands of the job, surface acting (showing an emotion you do not feel), deep acting (trying to actually feel the emotion required) and naturally felt emotion (when what you show is simply what you feel). It is different from the burnout test, which measures exhaustion as an outcome; this one looks at the day-to-day work that can lead there.
Based on: Emotional labour: surface and deep acting (Hochschild, 1983; Grandey, 2000; Brotheridge & Lee, 2003; Diefendorff et al., 2005)
Possible results
Display demands
How often and how intensely your job requires you to show particular emotions.
Surface acting
Showing an emotion you do not feel, or hiding one you do.
Deep acting
Working to genuinely feel the emotion your job asks you to show.
Naturally felt emotion
How often the emotions your job wants are simply the ones you already feel.
Common questions
What is the difference between surface acting and deep acting?
Surface acting changes only the outside: you smile while staying irritated. Deep acting tries to change the feeling itself: you remind yourself why the customer is stressed until you actually feel more patient. Grandey framed them as two forms of emotion regulation, and studies since have repeatedly found surface acting to be the more draining of the two.
Is emotional labour the same as burnout?
No. Emotional labour is part of the work itself - the effort of managing what you feel and show. Burnout is a possible result of long-term strain, marked by exhaustion and detachment. High display demands met mainly by faking are one of the better-documented routes to burnout, but many people do intense emotional work for years without burning out.
Can you reduce the cost of emotional labour?
Partly. Shifting from faking towards deep acting - finding a real reason for the patience you need - tends to help. So do recovery breaks away from the public, colleagues you can be honest with afterwards, and managers who accept that not every interaction will be cheerful. Some of the fix is organisational, not personal.
Sources
- Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press.
- Grandey, A. A. (2000). Emotional regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. doi:10.1037/1076-8998.5.1.95
- Brotheridge, C. M., & Lee, R. T. (2003). Development and validation of the Emotional Labour Scale. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. doi:10.1348/096317903769647229
- Diefendorff, J. M., Croyle, M. H., & Gosserand, R. H. (2005). The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labor strategies. Journal of Vocational Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2004.02.001
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from published emotional labour scales, so scores cannot be compared with their norms. Most studies come from service, health and education jobs in Western countries, and display rules differ between cultures and workplaces. The first bar describes your job rather than you. This is not a burnout diagnosis; if you feel drained most days, talk to your doctor or an occupational health service.
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