Teaching Emotional Labor through Television and Film

Emotional labor refers to the process by which workers manage their emotions to align with organizational rules (Hochschild). Extant research shows that structurally disadvantaged groups (e.g., women and people of color) are over-represented in service work that requires emotional labor (Kang; Macdonald and Merrill; Macdonald and Sirianni). In the classroom, we have found the discussion of emotional labor to be a contentious issue, with students debating the validity of the concept and/or not understanding its relationship to status. We teach the concept of emotional labor in the sociology course Gender and Work (Sociology 3290). Our classes are capped at forty-five students, and our class sizes have ranged from thirteen to thirty-nine students. This course examines men and women as both productive and reproductive laborers in the past and present. Though we focus on trends within the US, we examine various axes of inequality (e.g., race, class, sexual orientation) that intersect with gender to produce different experiences in the work-force and at home for men and women. We cover topics such as the gender wage gap, occupational sex segregation, sexual harassment, and divisions of household labor, childcare, and elder care.

In order to help students better understand the concept and consequences of emotional labor, we created an “active learning” approach in which students complete a three-part emotional labor project. First, students work in groups to find television or film clips that show examples of emotional labor in the work-place. Then, students present their clips to the class and explain how emotional labor was evident. Given students’ visual orientation and knowledge of popular culture, short clips from television and film can be useful tools in helping students see the pervasiveness of emotional labor in the workforce. Throughout the project, students read academic work on emotional labor that documents its status dynamics. The final part of the project involves students writing a critical analysis (see Appendix).

The purpose of this paper is to develop a pedagogical approach and provide a practical tool for instructors of emotional labor to help engage their students. To do so, we divide this article into several parts. First, we explain specific challenges and goals in teaching emotional labor. Second, we conceptualize active learning. Third, we describe the role of television and film clips in advancing students’ understanding of academic material. Fourth, we provide examples of student work. Fifth, we describe data and methods used to evaluate the activity using student responses, embedded measures, and a pretest/posttest comparison. We end by discussing the advantages of this active learning approach.

Goals and Challenges of Teaching Emotional Labor

Our pedagogical goals in teaching emotional labor are threefold. First, we want students to understand the concept and components of emotional labor. Arlie Hochschild defines emotional labor as the process by which workers manage and direct their own emotions to fit with organizational rules about societally approved emotional experiences and expressions. Emotional labor can involve surface acting, or attempting to align one’s expression of emotion with normative expectations about emotional expressions (known as display rules). Emotional labor can also involve deep acting or attempting to align one’s personal experience of emotions with normative expectations about what emotions people “should” feel in a given situation (known as feeling rules). Emotional labor is work that people do to keep their emotions in line with what is expected by the organizations in which they work. As such, it is a regulated job requirement.

Second, lower status actors (with regard to race, class, and gender) are often expected to perform more emotional labor than higher status actors. While higher status actors have their feelings noticed and considered important, lower status actors do not. Additionally, women are more likely than men to be overrepresented in jobs that require emotional labor (Hochschild). Hochschild estimates that roughly half of all women’s jobs and one-third of men’s jobs require considerable amounts of emotional labor. Emotional labor is not only gendered in frequency of performance but also in terms of the experience of such work. While women are often required...