An Occupational Portrait of Emotional Labor Demands and their Psychosocial Consequences for Workers

• In Event: 452 - Regular Session. Job Quality, Insecurity, and Well-Being

Abstract

Merging a nationally representative study of American workers (n=1800) with the O*NET occupation-level dataset, we examine the association between emotional labor demands and worker well-being and job satisfaction. The literature on the psychosocial consequences of emotional labor has grown substantially since Hochschild’s (1983) seminal work on the subject; however, research has revealed inconsistent findings about its implications for workers. These inconsistencies may be in part due to an overreliance by researchers on case studies of ‘emotional labor’ occupations, which has produced inconsistent conceptual and operational definitions of the construct. To our knowledge, there is limited research that has investigated the social distribution and consequences of emotional labor using a consistent measure of the construct with a nationally representative sample of workers. We address this issue by following Glomb and colleagues’ (2004) measurement strategy to construct an emotional labor demand scale based on occupation information from the O*NET dataset. Connecting this occupation-level information to the WSH dataset, we find no difference in the psychological well-being of workers in occupations with high emotional labor demands. We do find, however, that emotional labor demands are associated with an reduced likelihood of having highly satisfying work among individuals who report low job autonomy. Conversely, for workers with high job autonomy, emotional labor demands are associated with an increased likelihood of having satisfying work and a reduced likelihood of reporting poor health. Our findings confirm previous research on the importance of job control in shaping the psychosocial consequences of emotional labor.

Authors

• Diana Elizaebeth Singh, McMaster University

• Paul Glavin, McMaster University