User:Kaimcamc/Emotional labor

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Roles that have been identified as requiring emotional labor include those involved in education, public administration, law, childcare, teaching, health care, social work, hospitality, media, advocacy and espionage. As particular economies move from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands when compared to sixty years ago.

Teachers

Zang et al. (2019) looked at teachers in China, using questionnaires the researchers asked about their teaching experience and their interaction with the children and their families. According to numerous studies, early childhood education is important to a child's development, which can have an effect on the teachers emotional labor, along with their emotional labor having an effect on the children. A big focus in this study was the use of surface acting in early childhood teacher. Zang et al. (2019) found that surface acting was used significantly less than deep and natural acting in kindergarten teachers, along with early childhood teacher are less likely to fake or suppress their feelings. They also found that more experienced teachers had higher levels of emotional labor, because they either have more skills to suppress their emotions, or they are less driven to use surface acting.

Police work

According to Martin (1999), police work involves substantial amounts of emotional labor by officers, who must control their own facial and bodily displays of emotion in the presence of other officers and citizens. Although policing is often viewed as stereotypically masculine work that focuses on fighting crime, policing also requires officers to maintain order and provide a variety of interpersonal services. For example, police must have a commanding presence that allows them to act decisively and maintain control in unpredictable situations while having the ability to actively listen and talk to citizens. According to Martin (1999), a police officer who displays too much anger, sympathy, or other emotion while dealing with danger on the job will be viewed by other officers as someone unable to withstand the pressures of police work, due to the sexist views of many police officers. While being able to balance this self-management of emotions in front of other officers, police must also assertively restore order and use effective interpersonal skills to gain citizen trust and compliance. Ultimately, the ability of police officers to effectively engage in emotional labor affects how other officers and citizens view them. Van Gelderen et al. (2017) studied emotional labor and its relationship with performance and strain on a day-to-day basis of police officers. They found that deep acting is postively relations to daily performance, while surface acting is negatively related to service performance. Deep acting seemed to be more beneficial to the officers at the start of their shift and surface acting was related to strain at the end of their shift. Van Gelderon et al. (2017) said that when an officer has a higher strain level, more emotional dissonance can result, which can result in more acting emotions, and resource losses.

Public administration

Many scholars argue that the amount of emotional work required between all levels of government is greatest on the local level. It is at the level of cities and counties that the responsibility lies for day to day emergency preparedness, firefighters, law enforcement, public education, public health, and family and children's services. Citizens in a community expect the same level of satisfaction from their government, as they receive in a customer service-oriented job. This takes a considerate amount of work for both employees and employers in the field of public administration. Mastracci and Adams (2017) argues that public servants are at risk of being alienated because of their unsupported emotional labor demands from their jobs. This can cause surface acting and distrust in management. There are two comparisons that represent emotional labor within public administration, "Rational Work versus Emotion Work", and "Emotional Labor versus Emotional Intelligence."

Gender

Emotional labor also affects women by perpetuating occupational segregation and the gender wage gap. Job segregation, which is the systematic tendency for men and women to work in different occupations, is often cited as the reason why women lack equal pay when compared to men. According to Guy and Newman (2004), occupational segregation and ultimately the gender wage gap can at least be partially attributed to emotional labor. Specifically, work-related tasks that require emotional work thought to be natural for women, such as caring and empathizing are requirements of many female-dominated occupations. However, according to Guy and Newman (2004), these feminized work tasks are not a part of formal job descriptions and performance evaluations: "Excluded from job descriptions and performance evaluations, the work is invisible and uncompensated. Public service relies heavily on such skills, yet civil service systems, which are designed on the assumptions of a bygone era, fail to acknowledge and compensate emotional labor." According to Guy and Newman (2004), women working in positions that require emotional labour in addition to regular work are not compensated for this additional labour because of the sexist notion that the additional labour is to be expected of them by the fact of being a woman.Guy and Azhar (2018) found that emotive expressions between sexes is affected by culture. This study found that there is variability to how women and men interpret emotive words, and specifically results showed that culutre played a huge role in these gender differences.

Coping skills

Coping occurs in response to psychological stress—usually triggered by changes—in an effort to maintain mental health and emotional well-being. Life stressors are often described as negative events (loss of a job). However, positive changes in life (a new job) can also constitute life stressors, thus requiring the use of coping skills to adapt. Coping strategies are the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that you use to adjust to the changes that occur in your life. The use of coping skills will help a person better themselves in the work place and perform to the best of their ability to achieve success. There are many ways to cope and adapt to changes. Some ways include: sharing emotions with peers, having a healthy social life outside of work, being humorous, and adjusting expectations of self and work. These coping skills will help turn negative emotion to positive and allow for more focus on the public in contrast to oneself.

Dealing with situations in the workplace that may affect the emotional labor of the worker usually happen quickly, which Matteson and Miller (2014) explains that there should be a manager that the employees can ask to help and get involved in the situation. The manager should intervene the situation using deep acting strategies, that help deescalate the situation and eliminate emotional dissonance.