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This paper describes the development and validation of the Emotional Labour Scale (ELS) as tested on samples of 296 and 238 respondents. The ELS is a 15-item self-report questionnaire that measures six facets of emotional display in the workplace, including the frequency, intensity and variety of emotional display, the duration of interaction, and surface and deep acting. Estimates of internal consistency for the subscales ranged from .74 to .91. Confirmatory factor analysis results provided support for the existence of six unidimensional subscales. Evidence was also provided for convergent and discriminant validity.
Much of what workers do on the job entails the management of emotions in their interactions with others. The display of emotions or the use of feelings to accomplish their tasks is central to their role performance. Goffman (1959) was among the first researchers to observe that behaviours are guided by the 'invisible hand' of norms for appropriate behaviour or expectations that are established by organizations. Across a number of occupational roles, the 'act of expressing socially desirable emotions' (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993, pp. 88-89) during service transactions is the basis for emotional labour (EL). Employees perform EL when they regulate their emotional display in an attempt to meet organizationally-based expectations specific to their roles. Such expectations determine not only the content and range of emotions to be displayed (Hochschild, 1983), but also the frequency, intensity and the duration that such emotions should be exhibited (Morris & Feldman, 1996, 1997). In expressing the desired emotions, employees may experience emotional dissonance. This occurs when feelings differ from expressed emotions owing to incompatibility between organizationally based expectations and actual feelings held by the workers (Morris & Feldman, 1996; Zerbe, 2000). Hochschild's (1983) groundbreaking study found that workers dealt with this dissonance either by simply altering their displayed feelings (surface acting) or by 'conjuring up' the appropriate feelings within themselves (deep acting).
It should be noted that EL does not always involve or lead to emotional dissonance (see Zerbe, 2000). Indeed, both Ashforth and Humphrey (1993), and Morris and Feldman (1997) explicitly recognize that workers may genuinely feel the emotions displayed. In such cases, EL has more to do with managing the appropriate emotions rather than faking (i.e. expressing unfelt emotions). Hence, in our formulation, we...