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Emotional Labor, Burnout, and Inauthenticity:
Does Gender Matter?*
A number of researchers have examined the conditions under which individuals perform emotional labor and the effects of such labor on psychological well-being. Much of this research has been limited to the experiences of service-sector workers in highly gender-segregated jobs. Prior survey research also tended to focus on dimensions of interactive work rather than on the actual "management of feeling" that is the foundation of the emotional labor process. Addressing each of these issues, we examine the experience and management of positive, negative, and agitated emotions. Building on prior theory and research, we argue that the management of agitation is the form of emotional labor most likely to be associated with increased feelings of burnout and inauthenticity, and that this negative effect on well-being should be more common among women. We find that managing feelings of agitation increases burnout and inauthenticity and that inauthenticity is most pronounced among those experiencing the highest levels of agitation. These effects do not differ by gender, however.
Two fundamental and overlapping trends underlie late-twentieth-century changes in the American workplace: the rise in women's rates of employment and the shift from an industrial economy rooted in the performance of physical labor to a postindustrial economy grounded in the skilled performance of emotional labor. Some of the social psychological implications of these transformations were foreseen by Mills (1956) and explored thoughtfully by Kanter (1977). The connections between these two trends were not demonstrated empirically, however, until Hochschild conducted her intensive examination of flight attendants and bill collectors in The Managed Heart (1983).
Hochschild defined emotional labor as "the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display" (1983:7; emphasis added). She further distinguished "emotional labor" from "emotion work" by noting that the former is performed in public for a wage, while the latter takes place in private. The more general term emotion management highlights the process that is common to both emotional labor and emotion work. The two concepts are distinguished by the context in which the act of management occurs.
Building on the ideas presented in Hochschild's (1983) original study, a growing number of researchers have explored the conditions under which individuals perform emotional labor and the...