Indian Journal of Social Science Researches Vol.

7 (1), March, 2010, pp 83-89 ISSN : 0974-9837

Emotional Labor and Health Outcomes: An Overview of Literature and Preliminary Empirical Evidences
Sandeep Kumar*, Binayak Shankar** & A. P. Singh***
Several job conditions in the service sector organizations have been hypothesized to be linked to experience of stress due to the performance of emotional labor and, ultimately results in health outcomes. People in the lower status categories like women, people of inferior color, children- lack a status shields against poorer treatment of their feeling (Hochshild, 1983). Social Distribution of jobs leads to certain sub-groups of workers to assume emotional labor. The performance of emotional labor appears to have both positive and negative consequences related to health. Emotional labor through dissonance created by surface acting and/or the effort required for deep acting creates a stressor for service sector employees that may negatively impact psychological, behavioral and physical well-being. Job/ task and organizational demands are the stressors which lead to acute reactions at psychological, physiological and behavioral levels. These reactions finally affect the health outcomes in the form of several illnesses such as depression, hypertension, coronary heart disease and alcoholism. In this relationship of emotional labor and health outcomes social support, interpersonal competence, coping and defense mechanism play the role of buffers.

Keyw or ds: emotional labor, emotional dissonance, health outcomes. ywor ords: n the past few decades, due to the rise of service economy researchers have elaborated their view of labor characteristics to include the performance of emotional labor (Daniels, 1987; England, 2005; Finemann, 1993). Basically, emotional labor through emotional dissonance created by different strategies of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) acts a stressor for service workers that in turn may negatively affect psychological, behavioral and physical well-being (Pugliesi, 1999, Gelderen et al., 2007, Karim, 2009). 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 displays are on other target people who can be clients, customers, subordinates or co-workers. The term emotional labor was first defined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) as the management of feeling to create a publicity observable facial and bodily display. Following her seminal piece in which she coined this term, 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 (Grandey, 2000). Hochschild (2003) used the term emotion work to refer to any attempt to modify

* Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221005. E-mail: skumarbhu@gmail.com ** Research Scholar, Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221005. *** Professor, Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221005.

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the experience or expression of a consciously felt emotion. When the individual performs emotion work as a required part of her/his actual job performance it is called emotional labor. The job involving emotional labor is defined as those that: (a) require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public; (b) require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person; (c) allow the employees to exercise a degree of control over their emotional activities (Hochschild, 1983). Display rules refer to the organizational rules about what kind of emotion to express on the job (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). Liu, Perrewe, Hochwarter, & Kachmar, (2004) interpreted emotional labor as the attempt by individual to reduce the discrepancy between felt 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. According to Grove and Fisk (1989) Employees can display organizationally-desired emotions by acting out the emotion. Such acting can take two forms: 1. Surface acting: It involves painting on affective displays, or faking; Surface acting involves an employees presenting emotions on his or her surface without actually feeling them. The employee in this case puts on a facade as if the emotions are felt, like a persona. 2. Deep acting: The employees modify their inner feelings to match the emotion expressions the organization requires. Emotional Labor and Health OutcomesSchaubroeck and Jones (2000) in their study

found that perceived demands to express positive emotion were positively related to health symptoms primarily among those reporting: (1) lower identification with the organization; (2) lower job involvement; and (3) 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 practices through which organizations might intervene to minimize its unhealthful consequences among employees. Researchers have also hypothesized that the strain of emotional regulation negatively affects employee physical and psychological well-being (Grandy, 2000). Bono and Vey (2005) on the basis of their meta-analytic study pointed out that emotional labor is associated with poor physical and psychological health. Emotional labor has also been correlated with cancer (James, 1993). We have conceptualized the relationship of emotional labor and health (Kumar, Shankar & Singh, 2010). In this conceptualization we have proposed an organizational model of emotional labor and the health related outcomes; in which emotional labor is considered as predictor, personality, work culture and coping have been treated as moderators and the criterion is the health outcomes. According to their proposition surface acting would negatively correlate with the health outcomes because of the high emotional dissonance and deep acting would positively correlated with the health outcomes due to relatively low level of emotional dissonance. The other factors such as personality, work culture and coping would moderate the relationship between the emotional labor and health outcomes.

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Conceptual Model of Emotional Labor and Health Relationship (Kumar, Shankar & Singh, 2010)

Predictor
Emotional Labour Surface Deep Acting

Moderators

Criterion Health Outcome -Physical Health -Mental Health

Big Five Personality Factorc -Openness to Change -Conscientiousness Extraversion -Agreebleness -Neuroticism Work Culture -Mallebility -Proactive -Obligation towards others -Responsibility seeking -Participation Coping -Emotion Focused -Task Focused

Therefore, it is clear that dispositional factors can predict the display of appropriate emotions (Tan et al., 2003). Though emotional labor is meant to create economic benefits for the organizations, it can have negative consequences on both the physical and mental health of the employees (Grandy, 2000). Hochschild (2003) argued that the effort to maintain a difference in feeling and feigning over the long run leads to strain, ultimately posing threats to the physical well-being of employees. Emotional Labor and Personality The different occupational roles, such as customer service, healthcare, protective services, and counseling occupations, employees are continually faced with

emotionally charged encounters requiring specific emotional displays. Personality has been widely correlated with emotional labor by different researchers in organizational settings. Research has shown that negative affectivity (neuroticism) is positively related to emotional labor (Liu et al., 2004). Brotheridge and Grandey (2002) found that negative affectivity is positively related to surface acting. Tan et al., (2003) in their study found that service employees with high extraversion traits are characterized by the display of more positive emotions than by service employees with low extraversion traits. So, we can say that negative affectivity increases and positive affectivity reduces emotional labor.

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It is generally anticipated that conscientious individuals would follow emotional display rules by working to be genuine in their expressions, rather than just going through the surface acting. Consistent with this argument, Diefendorff et al. (2005), in their study found that conscientiousness is negatively correlated with surface acting and agreeableness correlates positively with deep acting and negatively with surface acting. Tsai (2001) found that psychological climate for service friendliness is positively related to displayed positive emotions. Grandey (2003) argued that deep acting is positively related to and surface acting is negatively related to the perception of the service delivery as friendly and warm. Employees who feel that they have control at work feel more empowered in customer encounters, including aggressive ones and show less stress appraisal of customer verbal aggression (Grandey, Dickter & Sin, 2004). In professional and management jobs Simpson and Stroh (2004), found that women are better at suppressing negative feelings and displaying positive feelings than men. Also, men report more often suppressing positive feelings and displaying negative feelings than women report. Emotional labor has been widely studied and is of considerable interest in relation to outcomes such as sense of accomplishment and burnout. There is a growing interest in individual differences in emotional labor and in organizational display rule perceptions. Personality and emotional intelligence (EI) are relevant to this, but their effects have been examined in a relatively small number of publications. Surface acting (SA) has been found to be positively correlated with Neuroticism and negatively correlated with Extraversion and Conscientiousness, whilst deep acting (DA) was positively correlated with Agreeableness and Extraversion. Positive display rule perceptions were

correlated with Extraversion and negative display rule perceptions with Neuroticism. EI was unrelated to DA but negatively associated with SA and positively associated with positive display rule perceptions. Structural equation modeling has shown that EI partially mediates the effect of personality on SA. The personality correlations were similar to previous results. For EI it appears that high-EI individuals are less likely to make use of the emotionally superficial SA strategy; this may be related to their superior emotion regulation capabilities (Austin, Dore & ODonevan, 2007). Emotional Labor and Coping Gross, Cartensen, Tsai, Skorpen, & Hsu, (1997) argued that with age, individuals report greater emotional control and lesser negative emotional experience. They suggested that this may be the result of older participants adopting increasingly antecedent-focused strategies to influence their emotions. Consistent with this finding, Lockenhoff and Carstensen (2004) found that when time in life is limited, younger and older people alike pay more attention to the emotional aspects of situations, prioritize emotion-focused over problemfocused coping strategies. Similar effects emerge when time is limited for reasons other than chronological and there is ample evidence for a greater emphasis on emotion-focused coping strategies as people age, and this is associated with better emotion-regulatory skills and more positive and less negative emotional experience among older adults. Emotional Labor and Work Culture Researchers in the context of U.S. (Pugh, 2001; Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988), Canada (Rafaeli, 1989), and Israel (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1990) found a negative relationship between store busyness and employeedisplay of positive emotions. Surprisingly in the context of Singapore, Tan et al. (2003) found no relation between store busyness and employee display of positive emotion. Tan et al. (2003) suggested that it

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may be due to the cultural difference between the two contexts. In another study, Gross et al. (1997) used culturally diverse set of samples to explore the agerelated changes in emotion and emotion regulation. They found that age was associated with decreased impulse strength for European Americans but not Chinese Americans. They suggested that the broad impact of culture on the emotional behavior cannot be ruled out. However, much work has not been done to explore the role of culture on emotional labor. Subramanium (2005) suggested that there are two ways of measuring the demands of a job-time and effort. In the last two decades a new element has been added i.e.; emotional labor. From a customer service representative in a call centre to a teacher or manager, the emotional demands of any job have increased. Emotional empathy is the modern day equivalent of the muscle power that was essential to manual labor. Today, it is all about the ability to strike up a rapport with another human being. Employers believe customers will stay loyal when they are given personalized service in a mass consumer market driven technology. The standards are increasing day by day to the newer heights. Employees are instructed to provide service with personalized naturalness, spontaneity and warmth qualities which they must provide consistently to the customers. Mishra (2006) in his comprehensive review highlighted that the dominance of customer over the production/service employee, and as a result of this, increasing use of emotional labor in the work place has increased the need to better understand that what emotional labor is? This review has widely discussed the factors that affect and are affected by emotional labor. There is indeed a need to identify moderating effects of personality, work culture and coping on health outcomes. It may be used to select, train, and develop

the employees to adjust them and to behave in such a manner that less harmful effects on health outcomes are observed. In this way the employees will make themselves more efficient and productive for the organization in which the work.
Emotional Labor and Perceived Health Outcomes: An Experience with Bank Executives

It is evident that the modern organizations; especially service sector organizations are posing more emotional demands on their employees. The employee has to engage themselves in the performance of emotional labor as the demand of job situations. The customers are being treated as if they are king and the employees have to please them because the success of the organization ultimately depends on the customers. This kind of job situations are more demanding emotionally and the employee perform emotional labor. Both forms of emotional labor surface acting and deep acting creates a situation in which there is either emotional dissonance or to put more effort. The continuous performance of emotional labor results is health outcomes; more often negative in nature. Therefore, to support our conceptualization of emotional labor and health outcomes relationship semistructured interview sessions were conducted by the authors on the bank executives who directly interact with customers in the different private and public sectors banks. The banks in which the interviews were conducted are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, ICICIC Bank, ING Vysya Bank, HDFC Bank, and Canara Bank. The observed results indicated that out of 35 executives 28 (80%) who reported to be more involved in performing emotional labor also reported to have more health problems in comparison to them who were less involved in performing emotional labor. So, it can be concluded that the more emotional labor adversely affects

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perceived health outcomes. On the other hand it was also found that the private sector bank executives perform more emotional labor as compared to public sector banks. Among 15 private sector bank executives 13 (87%) reported to perform emotional labor and out of 20 public sector bank executives only 15 (75%) reported to be involved in performing emotional labor.. Therefore, it can also be concluded that private sector executives perform more emotional labor as compared to public sector bank executives. Discussion and Conclusion On the basis of the review of the literature we can say that most of the studies on emotional labor have been carried out on the western populations; very few studies are done in the Indian setting. And the studies on the western populations are mainly concerned with relating the emotional labor with other variables such as personality, work culture, and coping. The studies which directly deal with the emotional labor and health outcomes are very few and to clarify this relationship more studies are required (Mishra, 2006). The moderating effect of these variables in the relationship between emotional labor and health outcomes has not yet been well established (Kumar, Shankar and Singh, 2010). The assessment of emotion labor may be helpful to select the employees having the specific personality to involve themselves in emotional labor with care by evolving different effective ways of coping; so that they can avoid negative health outcomes and their effectiveness. The organizations (especially service sector organizations) could be benefited by way of having effective employees (Lockenhoff & Carstensen 2004). The relationship of emotional labor and work culture has not been yet well established. So, there is a need to establish the relationship between emotional labor and work culture; because much work has not been done to explore the role of culture on emotional labor. Similarly, the issues related with the moderating effect of work culture

in the relationship of the emotional labor and health outcomes have also not been properly addressed. The relationship between emotional labor and health outcomes is in its preliminary phase; therefore more extensive studies should be conducted to establish it more comprehensively. One of the measure advantages of focusing the studies on this particular theme is that by selecting the employees having the specific personality to involve them in emotional labor with care by evolving different effective ways of coping; so that they can avoid negative health outcomes and improve the effectiveness of the service sector employees.
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