The Hidden Cost: Emotional Labor, Mentoring, and Graduate Students' Well-Being

• In Event: The Cost of Achievement: Emotional Labor and Well-Being Among Graduate Students

Abstract

When examining graduate students’ well-being, the emotional and psychological burdens that students experience while navigating the mentor-mentee relationships are largely overlooked. Through the lens of emotional labor and utilizing the most recent data from a large-scale longitudinal study at a flagship Midwestern research university, this paper aims to better understand these emotional burdens. We find that doctoral students who are more likely to perform emotional labor have worse mental health, higher stress levels, lower sense of belonging, slower development in self-efficacy and disciplinary identity, and are more likely to leave their programs. We also find the performance of emotional labor is skewed towards underrepresented minoritized students and low-income students, exacerbating the existing disparities faced by various groups of underrepresented students.

Authors

• Yiping Bai, University of Michigan

• Yiran Chen, University of Michigan

• John Gonzalez, University of Michigan

• Heeyun Kim, University of Houston