Emotional labor: Display rules and emotion regulation at work

Emotional labor continues to gain popular media interest (Ben-Achour, 2015; Levy, 2018) and scholarly interest (Grandey, Diefendorff, & Rupp, 2013; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). Emotional labor is when employees manage emotions as part of a work role (Hochschild, 1983), such as a service provider's cheery greeting to customers or a therapists' suppression of shock at their client's secrets. Prototypically, emotional labor is performed during interactions with the public, by service employees who are selected for and trained in emotional displays with links to financial or professional gains (Grandey, Diefendorff, et al., 2013; Hochschild, 1983), though this conceptualization is broadening to include coworkers and leader-follower interactions. The potential trade-off between the performance goals of the organization and the employees' well-being is central to the study of emotional labor.