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Raechel Martin

Does Emotional Labor Improve Performance?

The term emotional labor has a relatively negative connotation, as labor tends to be

associated with a difficult task. Consequently, there are negative effects to emotional labor

such as emotional estrangement. However, several psychologists and other experts believe that

emotional labor has positive effects on the performance of the business. This could mean high

levels of monetary gain, employee efficiency, or customer satisfaction. Using evidence from

several studies, I will describe the effects of external factors on emotional display, and the

effect of emotional labor on sales, employees, and customer satisfaction in order to determine

whether or not emotional labor enhances performance.

Several external factors have the potential to affect emotional display such as age,

gender, experience, psychological climate (Tsai, 2001), or the current emotions or the

employee. According to Tsai (2001), both age and years of experience in comparison to

emotional display had insignificant correlations of .09 and .01, respectively. In support of

Hochschilds (1983) theory that women are more likely to manage their emotions, evidence

suggests that there is a .21 correlation between the sex of the employee and the amount of

deep acting emotional management they do while performing emotional labor (Goldberg and

Grandey, 2007); because of the coding scale (male= 1, female= 2) this would mean that more

women than men utilize deep acting management. The current emotions of the employee do

not seem to have a significant effect on emotional display with correlations of .01 (Tsai, 2001)

and -.13 (Pugh, 2001) in two separate studies. This is in accordance with the fact that no

consistent evidence exists to demonstrate that negative moods affect service behaviors

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(quoted in Tsai, 2001, p. 30). Psychological climate, defined and evaluated by Tsai (2001) as an

employees perception of what is expected of them at the workplace in regards to routines and

behaviors, has a significant effect on emotional display with a correlation of .16. Given this

evidence, it can be concluded that gender and psychological climate influence emotional

display the most.

It is common to assume that emotional display affects monetary gain because, logically,

it makes sense; more smiles would be thought to make more money. However, based on the

studies done by Tsai (2001), Tidd and Lockard (1978), and Sutton and Rafaeli (1991), this is

suggested to be false. In the study done by Tsai (2001), the insignificant correlation between

emotional display and purchase decision in the shoe store was .03 meaning that even when

emotional display was high, it did not foster an increase in the likelihood of purchase. Also, in

the Tidd and Lockards (1978) study, there was no correlation between positive emotional

display and amount of drinks bought. However, there was a correlation between positive

emotional display and the amount of tips received when the waitress was a woman and the

patron was a man. So, in this case, the waitress had monetary gain, but the business did not.

According to Sutton and Rafaeli (1991), the there is a weak negative correlation of -.06 between

positive emotional display and total sales; they denoted this correlation as insignificant. Even in

the study conducted by Pugh (2001), the correlation between transaction emotional display

and transaction busyness was -.28 further suggesting that positive emotional display did not

increase sales. All of these statistics point to the conclusion that positive emotional display does

not increase sales.

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So without monetary gain, how can emotional labor improve performance? When

looking at the short term, there are no immediate benefits. However, the purpose of a business

is not just to serve the customer in the present moment, but also to get them to return or

encourage others to come. Therefore, emotional labor is necessary to give the customer a

satisfactory perception of the store, restaurant, or other service, and thus improve

performance. In the Seattle bar, those who were shown positive emotional displays, returned

the displays to the waitress (Tidd and Lockard, 1978); this is could also be due to the theory of

emotional contagion: those who are smiled at, smile back. Regardless, the positive emotional

display had a positive effect on the customer and caused them to react positively. In Tsais

(2001) study, the correlation between displayed positive emotions and customer reaction was

.23; customer reaction in this study was defined as their perception of the service quality,

whether or not they would come back, and whether or not they would recommend that shoe

store to a friend. Using the correlation, it can be said that positive emotional display relates

strongly to a positive customer reaction. In the study by Pugh (2001), there was a clear positive

correlation between transaction emotional display and customer service quality: .26. According

to Goldberg and Grandey (2007), deep acting and surface acting emotional management has a

correlation to emotional exhaustion of .23 and .39 respectively. Therefore, it could be inferred

that the more an employee emotionally manages his or herself, the more exhausted they

become. This, unlike the previous effects on customers, is a negative effect on the employee.

However, this is a small sacrifice in order to gain business, and also for the employee to keep

his or her job. The positive effects regarding customer reaction override the negative effects on

the employees and help to improve the performance of the business.

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In conclusion, gender and the psychological climate of a workplace seems to have to

greatest effect on the emotional display of employees. That same emotional display also seems

to have little to no effect on purchase decision or total sales, but it does have an effect on

customer reaction to the service. Therefore, more positive displays may lead to more positive

reactions, recommendations, and future success or sales. The customers impression of the

service is vital to its future success, so even though positive emotional displays may not have

immediate monetary benefits or positive effects on the employees, they are still necessary in

order to provide possible future transactions and keep the business running.