Motivation, Fit, Confidence, and Skills: How Do Individual Differences Influence Emotional Labor?

In her book The Managed Heart, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild described several guidelines that the airlines industry gave to their flight attendants:"The first recommended strategy is to focus on what the other person might be thinking and feeling: Imagine a reason that excuses his/her behavior" (1983, p. 113). If this fails, the next recommended strategy was "to fall back on the thought 'I can escape'" (p. 113). Finally, stewardesses were told that, failing all attempts to regulate the feeling itself, they could resort to more acceptable ways of expression: "chewing on ice" (p. 113), for example. The flight attendants were thus encouraged to perform emotion labor: As part of their job requirement, they were asked to accommodate their emotions to the customers' needs and expectations. And since the emotions to be felt and displayed in the job context were very different from the flight attendants' habitual feelings and expressions, this emotion management came at a cost: It was alienating and stressful.