emotional labor

Noun

emotional labor (uncountable)

1. The act of managing feelings and displaying certain expressions in order to meet the requirements of a job.
   • It was that “pinch,” or conflict, between such feelings and the pilot’s Call for authenticity that led me to write down in my own notebook, "emotional labor."1983, Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press
   • Emotional labor does not observe conventional distinctions between types of jobs. By my estimate, roughly one-third of American workers today have jobs that subject them to substantial demands for emotional labor.2007, Helena Wulff, editor, The Emotions: A Cultural Reader, Berg Publishers, →ISBN, page 88
2. Jobs which require such management and display.
   • In emotional labor jobs (Hochschild 1983), emotional displays are a matter of survival rather than personal choice, as job security and pay are dependent on them.2015, Alicia Grandey, Deborah Rupp, William Bice, “Emotional labor threatens decent work: A proposal to eradicate emotional display rules”, in Journal of Organizational Behavior, →DOI, page 770
3. The display and management of emotion in non-professional, interpersonal relationships; emotion work.
   • The divide in who does what when it comes to housework persists because of our gendered expectation for women to perform emotional labor. We are the ones who decide whether to do a task ourselves or to delegate it to someone else, and doing physical labor is often the easier road.2018, Gemma Hartley, Fed Up: Navigating and Redefining Emotional Labor for Good
   • Like domestic labor, emotional labor is generally dismissed and not labeled work, but research shows it can be just as exhausting as paid work. Emotional labor can lead to insomnia and family conflict, according to a study published in Personnel Psychology.2018 November 14, Kristin Wong, “There’s a Stress Gap Between Men and Women. Here’s Why It’s Important.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 21 Jan 2021