Managing your own feelings, and producing the display of them, because your job requires it and pays for it — Hochschild's term for feeling sold as part of a wage. In wider use since the 2010s it also covers the same management done unpaid in private life, a broadening Hochschild objects to.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, 1983.
// Where it sits
The further right, the less of your inner life is off the clock.
What it really means
Arlie Russell Hochschild chose two jobs for her 1983 fieldwork, and the pairing is the whole argument.
Flight attendants, who are required to seem warm. And bill collectors, who are required to seem hostile.
If the subject were jobs that are emotionally tiring, the second group makes no sense. Hochschild's subject was narrower and sharper: jobs where your feelings are part of what the employer bought. Warmth and hostility are the same transaction — a feeling rule, set by a company, that you are paid to satisfy.
She identified two ways people meet those rules. Surface acting — producing the display without the feeling, which is exhausting because you are running two states at once. And deep acting — actually inducing the feeling in yourself, which works better and costs more, because now the company has reached past your face.
That is emotional labour: not the tiredness, but the commercialisation of feeling. Her subtitle says it directly.
And then the word left the building.
By the 2010s emotional labour had come to mean, in common use, the unpaid domestic version — remembering birthdays, managing a partner's moods, carrying the household's administrative and emotional load. Which is a real and badly under-described thing, and it is not what she named.
Hochschild has said so. In 2018 she objected publicly — "Really, I'm horrified" — that the broadening made the thinking blurrier, and agreed that the conversation had become a hazy one, run on a blunt concept. The phrase concept creep was that interviewer's, and it stuck.
The irritating part is that she had already named the other thing. In her scheme, the unpaid private-life version is emotion work. Two terms, distinguished on purpose, and the language kept one word and used it for both.
Which costs something specific. The original term made a claim about employment — that a wage can buy your inner life, and that this is a distinct thing to have sold. Stretch it to cover all interpersonal effort and that claim quietly disappears, which is a strange fate for a book called The Managed Heart.
Where it comes from
The pairing is deliberately economic. LABOUR is what gets sold. Hochschild's term for the same activity done unpaid in private life is 'emotion work' — a different word, on purpose.
Myths & misconceptions
Emotional labour means remembering birthdays and managing a partner's moods — the household mental load.
In Hochschild's definition it is PAID work. The unpaid private-sphere version has its own name in her scheme: 'emotion work'. She has said the broadening makes the concept blurrier, and calls its application to to-do lists and perfect Christmases an overextension.
It just means a job is emotionally draining.
The criterion is FEELING RULES imposed by an employer, met by one of two techniques — surface acting, where you fake the display, or deep acting, where you induce the actual feeling. The point is not that the work is tiring; it is that your feelings are part of what was bought.
Compare & contrast
Emotional labour vs emotion work
Same activity, different economy. Emotion work is done for people you love; emotional labour is done for a wage, under an employer's rules about what you must appear to feel. Hochschild drew that line herself and still defends it.
| // | Emotional labour | Emotion work |
|---|---|---|
| Paid | Yes | No |
| Rules set by | An employer | Nobody, or both of you |
| Can be refused | Not easily | In principle |
| Hochschild's term for it | This one | That one |
How it connects
- Boundariesthe vocabulary people reach for when the feeling rules become unbearable.
- Presenteeismthe other work term for a cost that never appears in any measurement.
Tell it apart
Questions people ask
- Is doing the dishes emotional labour?
- Not in the original sense — that is unpaid domestic work. Hochschild's term covers feeling managed for an employer, and she has a separate term, 'emotion work', for the private-life version.
- What were the original case studies?
- The smiles of flight attendants and the manufactured anger of bill collectors — deliberately chosen as the two poles of employer-mandated feeling. One is required to seem warm; the other is required to seem hostile.
- Does Hochschild approve of the popular usage?
- Not fully. She told The Atlantic she is 'horrified' by the broadening: 'I love the idea that people are exploring the realm, and so I welcome that, but I guess I don't like the blurriness of the thinking.' The phrase 'concept creep' is her interviewer's, and it stuck.