What Are the Costs and Benefits of Managing Emotion Life, in Private Life and at Work?

“When we manage an emotion we are partly managing a bodily preparation for a consciously or unconsciously anticipated deed” (Hochschild, 1983). It is clear from this statement that Hochschild takes into account the biological aspects of emotion whilst also focusing on the psychological characteristics of the development of the self along with the cognitive, bodily and expressive types of emotion work (Theodosious, 2006). Emotion work is learnt through socialisation and we only become aware of emotion work when we aren’t feeling how we are supposed to feel in a given situation. Throughout this assignment I shall focus on analysing both the costs and benefits of managing emotion with reference to specific examples relating to both private life and work life. The first paragraphs will provide a brief outline of what managing emotion entails, a description of emotion work and also an account of emotional labour. The subsequent paragraphs will discuss the costs and benefits of managing emotion life with relation to relevant examples. Finally the conclusion will provide a summary of what has been discussed throughout the essay.

Hochschild in her book “The Managed Heart” (1983) suggests that emotion management refers to how we regulate our emotion which leads to a visible body or facial display (Hochschild, 1983). She proposes that feeling rules are rules that set expectations about how we should feel in certain situations. For example we understand that we should feel, or at least appear to feel sad at a funeral due to our feeling rules (Hochschild, 1983). Hochschild suggests that emotional labour is the management of emotion within the work place that is exchanged for economic gain whereas emotion work is conducted in a private envi...

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... to the workplace could be if the customer praises you whilst you are executing emotional labour then the actual self will not believe the praise as the actual self will automatically assume that the praise only relates to the false self and not the actual self. This however could also benefit the individual in relation to criticisms in the work place because if the false self gets criticised by a customer then the actual self understands that this is aimed at the false self who is playing the specific job role and not the true self. This therefore shows that the false self could serve as self-protection however it does also create a sense of detachment from the real self.

NEED TO REFERENCE THIS!!! could emotional labour is that it can create emotional exhaustion and a reduction in job satisfaction as the individual is constantly having to manage their emotions.