Summaries literature CiWH&W
The Sociology of Emotional Behavior
A fundamental concern in the sociological interest in emotions is understanding how
emotions are regulated by culture and social structure and ow emotional regulation affects
individuals, groups and organizations.
Hochschild argues that emotions not only are shaped by broad cultural and societal norms,
but also are increasingly regulated by employers with an eye on the bottom line.
- Emotional labor =
Process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with
employer-defined rules and guidelines. (Moves from private realm to the public
world of work. Calls attention to how people manage their own feelings as a way to
create a particular emotional state in another person).
- Emotion Management (emotion work) =
Reference to how people actively shape and direct their feelings, and a recognition
that social structure and institutions impose constraints on these efforts. (Private act,
influenced by but not directly regulated by other people/organizations).
- Feeling rules =
Describe social norms about the appropriate type and amount of feeling that should
be experienced in a particular situation. Emotion management occurs as people
work to accommodate these norms.
- Deep acting =
Work that attempts to align privately felt emotions with normative expectations
(Attempt to change what is privately felt).
- Surface acting =
Work that attempts to bring the outward expression of emotion in line with them
(focuses on what is publicly displayed).
Emotional labor is seen as relevant to service jobs, since these jobs particularly depend on
workers’ ability to manage their emotions. Jobs requiring emotional labor are more likely to
be performed by women than men reflects deep-rooted stereotypes about what gender
is suitable for particular jobs.
Gender also influences how workers perform emotional labor and the ways in which gender
shaped the social interactions between worker and customer that it entails.
Women’s higher representation in jobs requiring deference (niceness, sociability) coupled
with their lower overall status gives women weaker “status shield” against other’s negative
emotions than men have.
Consequences of emotional labor:
- Emotive dissonance =
Sense of self-estrangement or distress (may happen when workers are required to
display emotions regardless of whether these are congruent with their feelings).
- Because of the deep connection between emotion and the self, those who perform
emotional labor are susceptible to a range of identity-related issues that impinge
upon their psychological well-being,
The sociological literature on emotional labor can be divided into two major streams of
research:
, 1. Uses emotional labor as a vehicle to understand the organization, structure and
social relations of service jobs
2. Focuses on individuals’ efforts to express and regulate emotion and the
consequences of those efforts
Emotional labor as interactive work (Area 1)
Jobs involving interaction with others are presumed to require significant amounts of
emotional labor, but this labor is examined in relation to other aspects of the job, most
especially the dynamics of power, status, and gender.
Power, Control, and Resistance in frontline service jobs.
Emotional labor is linked with more longstanding issues related to workers’ experiences in
jobs formally lacking in skill and power. The lack of autonomy is especially problematic for
frontline service job workers: employers’ attempts to control workers’ interactions with
customers are viewed as directly impinging on workers’ sense of themselves, thus creating
threats to self and identity not present in others types of jobs.
Some argue that workers’ subordination to customers is reinforced through cultural symbols
and a code of interaction that derive less from employers’ active efforts to organize work
than from more deeply rooted historical practices and assumptions about domestic service.
Some argue how both sets of employers attempt to control workers’ and customers’
behavior by routinizing their interactions Routinization in interactive service jobs is not
always possible or desirable. Employers will seek to routinize workers’ interactions with
customers only under certain conditions, they must believe that:
quality of interaction is important to the success of the enterprise
workers are unable or unwilling to conduct the interactions appropriately on their own
the tasks themselves are not too complex or context-dependent
Meeting employers’ expectations requires workers in both settings to engage in some form
of emotional labor (Fast food: smiling and being friendly – Insurance: people need to
transform themselves in effective salespeople). Rigid compliance with these expectations
is at least potentially damaging to workers’ sense of self and identity.
Gender, Race and Personal Service Work
An emotional proletariat = Service jobs in which workers exercise little formal power, are
often subject to employers’ attempts to monitor and control their interactions, and are
required to display friendliness and deference to customers. Tend to be gender-typed as
female jobs. Workers in frontline service jobs may have a difficult time maintaining their
dignity and engendering respect from customers, but such issues are more potent for
workers from more disadvantaged social groups. Deference – or the capacity to place
oneself in a ‘one down’ position vis-à-vis others – is a characteristic demanded of all those in
disadvantaged structural positions. When deference is made a job requirement, members of
these groups are likely to be overrepresented in these jobs or even seen as better suitable
than members of the more advantaged groups.
Link between workers’ characteristics and customers’ expectations has resulted in the
creation of gender and ethnic niches within the service sector and contributed to subtle
forms of employment discrimination for these frontline workers.
,There’s also body labor / Beauty service work = Jobs in which workers’ physical and
emotional labor are jointly directed toward enhancing women’s bodies. It’s performed
differently depending on the racial and class backgrounds of female customers.
Gendered form of service most associated with frontline work (personal, sociable, attentive)
is less generic than assumed expression depends instead on the race and class dynamics
of the setting in which it occurs.
Professionals and Expert Service Work
Professionals engaged in interactive work are called = Privileged emotion managers
Receive extensive training in techniques of emotion management and have more
resources available on the job to support their efforts.
Some found that developing the right degree of emotional detachment pays off as this
emotional demeanor enables them to establish their professional authority. However, the
ability to convey professional detachment may interfere with the ability to express more
openly feelings in personal relationships.
Emotional socialization = process through which students learn the appropriate emotional
demeanor for their job. Workers select jobs in part based on their stock of emotional
capital and its fit with specific occupational demands.
The professional domain usually presents more challenges for women where women
often have to perform different types and amounts of emotional labor than their male
counterparts, expectations are usually based on masculine terms (thus gender is embedded
in the professional expectations for emotional labor),
Care Work and Emotional Labor
Caregiving has been understood both as an expectation or norm with which female and
male workers are differentially expected to comply, as well as an informal aspect of workers’
interpersonal relationships at work.
Workers respond to the emotional labor demands of their jobs by engaging in reciprocal
emotion management for one another caretaking both a job requirement and informal
coping mechanism.
Employers can self-consciously create conditions that encourage relationship building and
emotional honesty in the workplace.
Organized emotional care = approach in which employers aim to create opportunities for
caring relationships to emerge on their own.
Paid or unpaid, care work is more likely to be the responsibility of women than men.
Interactive Work and Interaction at Work
Emotional labor is presented as part of the occupation: it is reflected in the job expectations
and requirements, the everyday performance of work tasks, and the structures and
processes that govern how work is done and evaluated.
Emotional labor shapes the organization and experience of work, especially the dynamics of
power and status and the ways in which these are negotiated and reproduced.
Emotion-focused approaches: expressed emotions and emotion management (area2)
,Research focuses on the role of emotion management in both arenas. Like studies of
expressed emotions in the workplace (interested in effects of displayed emotions on
customers) and workers’ private experience of emotions and their efforts to manage them
(aim to understand the effects of workers’ efforts to regulate their emotions on their own
psychological well-being and job attitudes).
Emotional Labor as Expressed Emotions
Managerial-focused organizational researchers argue that workers’ expressed emotions
should be the focus in emotional labor research. Because expressed emotions shape others’
reactions and behavior, they are presumed to be particularly important in understanding the
outcomes of workers’ interactions with customers. Expressed emotions are public, making
them easier for employers to monitor and researchers to observe than internal states or
feelings.
These expressions reflect three sets of factors:
1. Norms regarding what emotions should be displayed in a particular situation.
2. Characteristics of workers, including demographic characteristics, individual
temperament or disposition and the worker’s felt emotional reactions to a situation.
3. Features of the interaction, including characteristics of the target, as well as the
setting within which it is taken place.
Norms are shaped by employers’ specific requirements for emotional display and by societal
and cultural beliefs about emotional expression.
Two aspects of workers’ emotional dispositions should predict the degree to which they
comply with employer display rules emphasizing positive emotion:
1. Emotional expressiveness, defined as a person’s ability to display emotions
nonverbally,
2. The degree to which workers are experiencing a positive affective state at work:
- Workers who are generally more positive are thus expected to be more likely to
display positive emotions.
- Employers enforce display rules because they assume that workers’ compliance with
them is beneficial for the organization.
- Emotional contagion is one mechanism through which these effects might occur:
emotional contagion rests on the idea that exposure to an individual producing a
positive or negative emotion can produce a corresponding change in the emotional
state of the observer.
- Employee emotional expressiveness is associated with displays of positive emotion
and that employees’ display of positive emotion positively affects customers’ affect.
Emotional Dissonance and the Consequences of Emotional Labor
Operationalizing emotion management and emotional dissonance
Jobs require emotional labor when:
- its performance involves making voice or facial contact with the public,
- its performance involves producing an emotional state in the client/customer,
- the employer has an opportunity to control workers’ emotional display.
There’s a broad agreement that jobs requiring emotional labor are those in which workers
must interact with others.
,Measures to understand emotional labor:
- Measures of frequency and type of interactions,
- ‘Working with people’ score as a measure of the degree to which workers in that
occupation engage in emotion management,
- Measures of whether and how often workers must interact with others on the job,
- Measures of the extent to which workers engage in surface or deep acting,
- Measures of emotional dissonance, referring to the frequency with which a person
displays positive/negative emotions that do not correspond with what is felt in the
situation,
- Inauthenticity, disjuncture between who one is expected to be at work and the
person’s real self,
- Asking about the display of specific emotions or categories of emotions,
- Measures of display rules or the affective requirements of jobs; emphasis on the
degree to which workers perceive their jobs as requiring them to display certain
emotions or to be sensitive to the emotions of others,
- General measurements such as whether workers are expected to display or feel
certain emotions and the degree of explicitness in those expectations for emotional
display or feeling.
The consequences of emotional labor
Concept of burnout encompasses 3 distinct elements:
1. Emotional exhaustion
2. Depersonalization
3. Reduced sense of personal accomplishment
The most consistent findings in this body of research concern the relationship between
surface acting (or emotional dissonance) and the emotional exhaustion dimension of
burnout.
Workers who report to regularly having to display emotions that conflict with their own
feelings are more likely than others to experience emotional exhaustion.
There is little evidence that job characteristics or work demands related to interaction are
themselves sources of burnout of dissatisfaction. Employment in interactive work does not
put a worker at greater risk of burnout or other forms of psychological distress.
It is workers’ responses to those demands – what some refer to as workers’ emotional
regulation strategies – that seem more consequential in shaping psychological
consequences of emotional labor.
Workers who engage in deep acting or who genuinely experience the emotions they are
expected to display on the job seem better able to resist the kinds of negative consequences
studied by researchers.
According to some, workers’ feelings about their job may influence how they regulate their
emotions at work and burnout may be as much a cause of a worker’s strategies for
managing emotions as a consequence.
The consequences of workers’ efforts to regulate their emotions are likely to depend on job
characteristics long known to affect workers’ well-being, such as their levels of job
autonomy, individual characteristics, such as emotional expressivity, and other factors such
,as the characteristics of customers or the specific type of emotions workers are expected to
display.
Strategies of emotional regulation may also be shaped by the domain in which they occur,
the role expectations of participants, and characteristics of the targets of interaction. Some
argue that emotion management strategies of black and white professors are the
consequences of those strategies are shaped by students’ characteristics, especially their
social and cultural expectations about race.
Men, Work, and Mental Health: A Systematic Review of Depression in Male-
Dominated Industries and Occupations
Depression and bipolar disorders are among the main causes of disease and disability and
the prevalence of mental disorders comes at a substantial financial cost.
Depression and anxiety are also the most prevalent mental disorders in the working
population and a substantial proportion of costs associated with mental illness is due to lost
workplace productivity.
Traditional masculine norms and the stigma associated with mental illness can promote a
culture whereby men are reluctant to acknowledge or seek help for mental health problems.
Men have lower levels of mental health literacy than women and are less likely to visit their
doctor, use mental health services and discuss mental health issues. Adverse consequences
associated with poor mental health can be more severe amongst men.
Workplace factors can also contribute to poor mental health among men. Employment can
promote wellbeing by providing regular activity, time structure, social contact, a sense of
collective effort and social identity. The workplace can also be a source of psychological
distress that can negatively affect employee mental health: with male-dominated industries
being particularly problematic. Risk factors for mental illness can be found in these
industries:
- Isolated/solitary work
- Excessive/irregular workloads
- Poor physical conditions
- Lack of control
- Monotonous tasks
Workplace health promotion programs and interventions are increasingly being
implemented to prevent/minimize the emergence of problems and support workers with
mental health issues particularly relevant for men.
The workplace provides ready access to large numbers of men and contains existing
infrastructure and frameworks that can support mental health and wellbeing strategies. In
addition, addressing mental health issues as part of wider occupational health, safety and
wellbeing programs may create workplace norms that reduce stigma and facilitate help-
seeking. Workplace programs can also target other barriers to mental health help- seeking
behavior such as low levels of mental health literacy. Moreover, the workplace offers an
opportunity to develop tailored strategies that target specific high-risk industries and
occupations. These may be particularly beneficial for workers in male-dominated industries,
due to the high prevalence of mental health problems in combination with low mental
health literacy and a reluctance to seek help.
,Review indicates that those working in male-dominated industries are at higher risk than the
general population for symptoms of depression and it is likely that subgroups (e.g. blue-
collar workers) within these industries are particularly vulnerable. Variations in findings
between countries highlight the potential role played by cultural and contextual factors
found in different countries.
Physical and psychosocial working conditions are accounted for much of the variation in
rates of depression. Factors which were found to influence prevalence of depression in
male-dominated industries and occupations included:
- Work hours
- Level of physical activity
- Income
- Time pressure
- Job demands
- Job value
- Job security
- Job discretion
- Effort-reward imbalance
- Role conflict
- Emotional demands
- Exposure to violence/threats
- Social support
- Job status
Indicates that working conditions associated with different industries and occupations
explain much of the variation in mental disorder prevalence rates.
Specific occupational and/or industry working conditions are still likely to influence levels of
depression, over and above the role played by psychosocial and demographic factors.
The results highlight the importance of identifying “at risk” workforce groups by examining
variations in mental disorder prevalence by industry and occupation. Workplace factors
associated with poor mental health are likely to cluster within particular industries and
occupations, and the identification of high-risk workforce groups allows for the development
of tailored and targeted prevention and intervention strategies.
Main risk factors for depression in male-dominated industries:
- Poor health and lifestyles
- Unsupportive workplace relationships
- Job overload
- Job demands
Applying the Job Demands-Resources Model: A ‘How to’ Guide to Measuring
and Tackling Work Engagement and Burnout
Poor working conditions and burned-out employees are associated with sickness absence,
occupational injuries and accidents, poor work performance and reduced productivity.
Whereas the opposite is true for good working conditions and employee engagement. So,
psychosocial factors and employee well-being translate into financial business outcomes.
Therefore, it’s in a company’s self-interest to monitor psychosocial factors and work and to
,increase engagement (intrinsic reason). An extrinsic reason for organizations to monitor to
workplace is the legislation (in EU) on the prevention of psychosocial risks at the workplace.
The Job Demands Resources (JD-R) model can be used as an integrative conceptual
framework for monitoring the workplace with the aim to increase work engagement and
prevent burnout. It is particular suited for this purpose because:
1. It integrates a positive focus on work engag4ement with a negative focus on burn-out
into a balanced and comprehensive approach
2. It has a broad scope that allows to include all relevant job characteristics
3. It is flexible, so that it can be tailored to the needs of any organization
4. It acts as a common communication tool for all stakeholders
A brief overview of the model
The model is used to understand burnout, mental distancing, reduced efficacy. Later, the
model was supplemented with work engagement, a positive fulfilling psychological state that
is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption.
According to the JD-R model, every job includes demands and resources.
Job demands =
Aspects of the job that require sustained physical or mental effort and are therefore
associated with certain physiological and psychological costs > bad things at work that drain
energy.
Job resources =
Aspects of the job that may do any of the following: 1. Be functional in achieving work goals,
2. Reduce job demands and the associated psychological and physiological costs, 3.
Stimulate personal growth and development > good things.
The JD-R model integrates two basic psychological processes:
1. A stress process: when job demands are chronically high and are not compensated by
job resources, employee’s energy is progressively drained.
2. A motivational process: job resources have inherent motivational quality: they spark
employee’s energy and make them feel engaged which leads to better outcomes.
From an intervention point of view both high jobs demand and poor job resources
contribute to burnout, whereas only abundant job resources contribute to work
engagement by increasing job resources burnout is prevented and engagement is
fostered. In contrast, reducing job demands only affect burnout and not job engagement
(job demands may also be challenging in some point; lowering job demands could result in
less challenging jobs and hence lower levels of work engagement).
Two other extensions of the JD-R model:
1. Personal resources: Positive self-evaluations that are linked to resiliency and refer to
individuals’ sense of their ability to control and impact upon their environment
successfully. it is however unclear which place they should occupy in the model
and it seems to depend on the personal resource under study.
2. Engaging leadership: 1. Is rooted in a well-developed psychological theory of
motivation, 2. Focuses on how to increase employee engagement, 3. Includes an
individual as well as a social, team dimension. Engaging leader: 1. Inspire their
followers, 2. Strengthen their followers, 3. Connect their followers by this leader
promote the fulfillment of follower’s basic psychological needs for autonomy,
, competence and relatedness. Engaging leadership has an indirect effect on
preventing burnout and increasing engagement demands and increasing job
resources.
Job Demands Resources model.
The JD-R model basically states that decreasing job demands, increasing job (and personal)
resources and stimulating ‘engaged’ leaderships prevents burnout and increases work
engagement. And as a result of this less negative and more positive outcomes are achieved
for both employees and organizations.
An online JD-R Assessment tool: The Energy Compass (EC)
The EC guides individuals as well as organizations in choosing the right direction to find
energy in work. Besides being based on a validated conceptual framework (the JD-R model)
it is also more efficient and more balanced compared to other psychosocial questionnaires.
The EC uses shorter scales and suffers less from negativity bias because it includes more
positive constructs. The EC consists of a broad set of valid and reliable indicators of job
demands, job resources, outcomes and personal resources that have been identified by
previous research and consultancy experience. It assesses a broad variety of constructs with
relatively few items, thereby balancing a positive and negative approach.
The Effectiveness of Workplace Health Promotion Interventions on Physical
and Mental Health Outcomes – A Systematic Review of Reviews
The number of people with a chronic disease (diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.)
is growing in many developed countries. These diseases impact individuals in terms of
reduced quality of life and affect employers who have to deal with negative employment
outcomes. The high prevalence of chronic disease implies a public health challenge
associated with higher health care costs and decreased workplace productivity. Considering
the aging population, there’s a need to prolong active labor force participation. Prevention
of chronic diseases and exit from the workplace is thus essential.
The workplace offers an ideal setting to support the promotion of health; it offers the
opportunity to promote health on an individual level, but can also target environmental
, changes to promote health behavior. Offering workplace health interventions is recognized
as a feasible and effective strategy for chronic disease prevention and control.
Strong evidence for positive effects of workplace initiatives on weight-related outcomes,
mental health and musculoskeletal health were found.
Strong evidence for an effect on weight-related outcomes, but not for cardiometabolic risk
factors were found, and it is unknown whether workplace health promotion in the long-term
may lead to a reduced incidence of CVD and T2DM.
For weight-related outcomes, mental disorders and musculoskeletal problems consistent
positive effects were found of workplace health promotion.
CBT intervention has shown to be effective in the prevention and reduction of anxiety
problems.
Other reviews on health promotion in the workplace conclude that comprehensive
multimodal interventions, including different intervention components, are more effective in
the prevention of chronic disease compared to single component interventions.
Can Occupational Safety and Health Problems be Prevented or Not? Exploring
the Perception of Informal Automobile Artisans in Nigeria
Hazards in the workplace are a problem worldwide, but particularly in developing countries.
Available reports point to higher rates of work-related mortality in Low- and middle-income
countries (LMICs) than in high-income countries. Particularly informal workers are
vulnerable to occupational injuries and diseases due to combination of poverty and unsafe
hazardous working conditions.
Occupational hazards and safety
Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) (2020): occupational hazard =
Any potential source that can cause injury or damage to the health of a worker.
Gambhir et al. (2001): occupational hazard =
A work material, substance, process or situation that predisposes to disease or accident, or
can directly cause disease or accident to workers in the workplace, even years after the
workers might have left the workplace.
A specific group that is subject to occupational hazards are informal automobile artisans.
International Labor Organization (ILO) distinguished 6 broad categories of work-related
hazards that can affect the health of car mechanics: Exposure to physical-, chemical- and
biological agents and to ergonomic, psychosocial and organizational risk factors.
Specific hazards for artisans are: exposure to lead or solvents and unsafe work-practices
(sucking petrol, washing hands with fuel, working in awkward postures, etc.).
Prevention of OSH problems
Prevention could be realized by implementing sector-specific OSH guidelines such as
developed by the ILO (using safety devices, providing protection, discarding outdated
equipment, etc.). These guidelines are however mostly targeted at formal organizations. In
developing countries, there are no laws that regulate OSH for informal workers. Hence, it’s
not a legal necessity to incorporate OSH measures in these workplaces.
Barriers to prevention
