What Is Emotional Labor?

By now you probably know more than you ever wanted to know about emotional intelligence. So, journalist Rose Hackman has brought forth a new concept,  emotional labor. 

It feels an awful lot like therapy, like empathic commiseration and feeling feelings. As Hackman correctly notes, women excel at emotional labor-- perhaps because they are more likely to go into labor-- but that men can also master it.

As for why they would want to do so, Hackman does not have a reasonable explanation. Men do not gain an advantage by spraying the essence of empathy around the room. They lose respect and prestige. 

As I pointed out here a few weeks ago on 7-22-2023, New York Times editorialist Michelle Cottle explained clearly that when men get along with men they do not resort to the same emotional labor as women do when they are connecting with other women. 

According to Cottle, men get along with each other-- they bond-- by doing things together, whether playing golf or fishing, while women require more open and feeling-full communication.

So, Hackman wants men to be more like women. She does not quite understand that men are ill suited for such a task and that efforts to do so will likely wreak havoc in the average workplace.

A man who gets up in a meeting and declares that he wants to share his feelings will lose respect. A man who asks the idiotic therapy question-- How does that make you feel?-- will lose respect.

It gets worse. A woman who does the same will also lose respect. The workplace is not a nursery; it is not a salon; it is certainly not a boudoir. It values professional competence over emotional lability. Bad things happen when one confuses the home and the workplace. And yet, Hackman wants everyone to do so.

Hackman’s considers emotional work to be akin to therapy. She also explains that it involves manipulating feelings in order to change emotions. Since feelings and emotions are roughly equivalent, her sentence is incoherent.

Emotional labor is the work someone does to regulate, modulate or manipulate their feelings to affect the emotions of people around them. Because this is the work of connection between humans, most emotional labor fundamentally cannot be automated.

As noted, this silliness about emotional work is mostly girltalk. Worse yet, it feels like bad therapy, practiced in public, not in private. To be clear, your feelings and your emotions are personal and private. Sharing them in public settings will damage your ability to lead, to cooperate, to work in groups.

Hackman is clear about the point:

For decades, this type of labor has been the central work of millions of employees across our economy, especially those concentrated in the highly feminized, so-called pink-collar industries — where, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs is only set to grow.

She adds:

Across the service, education, health care, and restaurant and bar industries, emotional labor is the work of the smiling employee who asks you about your day. It is the work of the schoolteacher who patiently manages a child’s confused feelings while running her entire classroom. It is the work of the customer service representative who remains unflappable while being screamed at, and that of the home health aide who intently listens to a patient’s story for the 100th time and remembers the name of each grandchild.

And yet, as the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Being overly personal tends to alienate people. And, when it does not alienate people, it might, when it is occurring between members of different sexes, be misread as flirtation.

Of course, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions, women gain enhanced empathy when they are pregnant. See the research done by Elseline Hoekzema in Barcelona. It is useful when dealing with infants, with beings who cannot express themselves with language. Pregnancy does not enhance the father’s capacity for empathy.

So, on this score Hackman is willfully blinding herself to reality. Being a good feminist means ignoring reality. 

Studies have found that while a man who wants to ascend in corporate settings must act both competent and confident, a woman must act competent and confident and display feminine, other-oriented traits. Simply leaning in is not enough: She must also provide emotional labor.

And yet: The ability to care, connect and empathize has little to do with inherent ability tied to gender or ethnicity and much to do with motivation.

On this score, the researchers have all been blinded by their feminist bias:

Research is clear, though, that there is no innate reason for certain groups to provide emotional labor. In fact, when money is an incentive, everyone, including men, can perform astonishing — and, crucially, equal — amounts of empathy and emotional labor.

As for the way that emotional labor may or may not contribute to workplace cohesion, Hackman is also wrong. Teammates do not get along because they feel each other’s feelings. They get along because they wear the same uniform, play the same game by the same rules and place group interest above personal interest.

So, Hackman is arguing that  emotional labor makes everyone in the workplace more motherly. And it tends to strike out against formality and propriety, decorum and civility. This will undermine group cohesion and, as an unwanted sidelight, will invite certain people to see their workplace as a pick-up joint.

Recognizing emotional labor at work means identifying employees who engage in positive relationship management with people inside and outside an organization. It means looking for people who actively enable smooth collaboration and teamwork, who are flexible and adaptable, and who show an ability to anticipate needs, exercise patience, and focus on the bigger picture through shifting environments and levels of pressure.

Unfortunately, Hackman argues that rewarding emotional labor will improve the prospects of women and minorities. She is suggesting that women and minorities cannot play by the rules, cannot put on the uniform, and cannot place group interest over their personal predilections.

It is a bad idea. It is so bad that you have to imagine that corporations across America will be hopping on the emotional labor bandwagon. Nothing like a bad idea to inspire corporate America.