The Importance Of Emotional Labor

Emotion is one of the unique qualities that make us human. Emotion is used to create, monitor, and preserve social bonds, and also an important element in conflict, social movements, and social change. Arlie Hochschild created the term ‘emotional labor’ in 1983, which refers to the process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines. When engaging in emotional labor, you control your feelings to fulfill the goals and expectations of your organization. This means that you either express only your positive feelings, or hide or manage your negative feelings. To deal with negative emotions, people tend to do one of the following show emotion they don 't really feel, hide

The different types of job/ task and organizational demands are such stressors that results in acute reactions at psychological, physiological and behavioral levels (Gilboa et al., 2008). These reactions finally affect the health outcomes in the form of several illnesses such as depression, hypertension, coronary heart disease and alcoholism (Grandy, 2000, Agervold, 2009). Emotional labor is a form of emotional regulation in which employees are expected to display certain emotions as part of their job and to promote organizational goals. The effects of emotional display are on other targeted people who can be clients, customers, subordinates or co-workers. Liu, Perrewe, Hochwarter, & Kachmar, (2004) interpreted emotional labor as the attempt by individuals to reduce the discrepancy between felt emotions and displayed emotions. From the perspective of the individual service employee, emotional labor involves individual differences as well as ‘individuals’ interpretations of their emotional experiences when examining the causes and consequences of emotional labor. Individual differences may predispose individuals to feel and perceive stimuli in certain ways. Schaubroeck and Jones (2000) in their study found that perceived demands to express positive emotion were positively related to health symptoms primarily among those reporting: lower identification with the organization; lower job involvement; and lower emotional adaptability. The effects of various personality traits and situational variables on perceived emotional labor differ depending on the nature of the emotional labor. They also discussed the implications of emotional labor for health and