Emotion Management

Main text: Hochschild, Arlie. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

Recommended:

Kemper, Theodore D. 1981. “Social Constructionist and Positivist Approaches to the Sociology of Emotions.” American Journal of Sociology, 87(2), 336-362.

Great Link: Arlie Hochschild: The Presentation of Emotion

Question Being Asked: Hochschild is generally asking what is real or true, but more specifically looks at relationships between individuals to determine what is real through examining labor/feeling/emotion.

Main Argument: Hochschild’s main argument is shaped by her repeated questions, like “How can we try to feel?” (pg. 17); “What happens when the managing of emotion comes to be sold as labor?” (pg. 19); and implied questions like What determines the value (high or low) behind a smile? or What are the reasons behind the smile? All of these questions sum her argument up in the three main elements: labor/feeling/emotion. The labor element is explicitly stated in the title of the book (“commercialization”) and I saw that clearest when Hochschild stated “For the flight attendant, the smiles are a part of her work.” (pg. 8) In her case, her “work” is her “labor” which causes me to want to place value on it.

“Emotion is a potential avenue to ‘the reasonable view,’ [and] can tell us about a way of seeing.” (pg. 30) Here, Hochschild is poking at what is real and true. She does a service to the reader by explaining how she is defining the connection to or portal through which we can see or obtain truth (I’m considering “reason” to be truth). Continuing, Hochschild further tosses around our approach to discover general reality when she throws in the curveball sort of statement like, “What if the emotion was phony?” This is to ask, if our path to reality is skewed, then can we really get to reality?

-

Critique: Hochschild examines the position of flight attendant. This is a customer service position. I find it hard to limit the main basis of a theory on one profession (I know there is more in the book, but that’s the bulk of the basis). In other words, when I think about this theory I will forever think of flight attendants. This was the same feeling I got when I critiqued Goffman. I understand he was trying to analyze everyday events but he was only discussing certain events. When we did the exercise in class when we looked out the window we were only looking at what we could see in East Lansing. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is important to view things from a vantage point and avoid getting too comfy in the arm chair. However, I believe it is a stretch to try to develop an overarching theory from one small or minute set of interactions.

Hochschild does an adequate job by discussing possible paths to alternative reality on pgs. 44-47 using terms like illusion, invented, made-up, gaining or losing a sense of “real” or “true self,” and pretend. I thought it was helpful to stimulate thoughts in the readers’ heads. However, I never saw a clear statement. I was usually left guessing at what Hochschild was getting at. I always had a question after a Hochschild statement or a statement (that I was unsure about) after one of her questions. For example, “Feeling can be used to give a clue to the operating truth.” (pg. 33) How does the “operating” truth differ from regular truth?

The general critique of Hochschild’s writing is that it is indefinite. “What is natural or spontaneous?” (pg. 22) What are the difference between actions and feelings? Is it possible for the “painted on” and “real self” be the same thing? Does “deep acting” influence “surface acting” or vice versa? As a reader, it was a though provoking book. As a definitive and clearly developed theory, I think it falls short.

-

Modern Application:

This book seems like it would fit into a business school class or a psychology class and here is why. It talks about quantifying (not really explicitly, but implicitly) the value of a smile. A President or CEO of a service industry institution is going to have to determine how much effort and time his company will put into ensuring a smile and how much monetary (exchange) value each smile will return to the company. The flight attendant’s smile, for example, is an asset. When determining initiatives for the coming year, the CEO must ask himself “Do we put more money into workplace safety this year, or marketing, or developing our ‘customer care’ platform?” As a businessman, he is making the determination based on dollars and cents. But, and this is another place the emotional commercialization comes in, the CEO is thinking subconsciously about whether or not the customer (the person viewing the performance) really cares, and at what level he cares about the smile. The CEO is trying to get into the mind of the audience. After making his decision on what’s on the mind of the consumer, the CEO then manipulates the performance of the actor (flight attendant). I could go on and on about where the nodes are and what each connecting line means, but then I would be going outside of Hochschild’s book.

-

Notes:

Emotional System

  1. Labor
  2. Feeling (pg. 17): “like emotion, is a sense like the sense of hearing or sight experienced when bodily sensations are joined with what we see or imagine; not stored inside us; are not independent of acts of management”
    • Q: How can we try to feel? (pg. 17)
    • A:We are attempting to manage emotions.
      • Pg. 25-28: pretend, deep breathing, discover what caused the emotion, preventative tactics
    • Q: “What happens when the managing of emotion comes to be sold as labor?” (pg. 19)
    • A: Transmutation, “a link between a private act and a public act” (pg. 19)
      • “When the ‘womanly’ art of living up to private emotion conventions goes public, it attaches itself to a different profit-and-loss statement.” (pg. 20) commercialized
  3. Emotion
    • “Every emotion has a signal function.” (pg. 29)
    • “Emotion is a potential avenue to ‘the reasonable view,’ [and] can tell us about a way of seeing.” (pg. 30)
    • Pg. 31-32: Sports reference
    • Institutional emotional management (pg 48) assume the function of the director
  • Commercialization
    • “The pilot spoke of the smile as the flight attendant’s asset.” (pg. 4)
      • Q: What determines the value (high or low) of the smile?
      • A: “Some feelings are more valuable objects than others, for they are more richly associated with other memorable events.” (pg. 42)
    • Drinks served with a smile (pg. 6) means a smile is a measurable asset to be used in exchange/commerce.
  • Genuineness/Truth
    • “Our flight attendants’ smiles… will be more human than the phony smiles you’re resigned to seeing on people who are paid to smile” (pg. 4-5)
      • Q: What are the reasons behind the smile?
      • A: Survival, pg. 17
      • Phony: illusion, invented, made up, gaining or losing a sense of ‘real’ or ‘true self,’ pretend (pg. 44-47)
    • “A speed-up of the human assembly line makes ‘genuine‘ personal service harder to deliver…” (pg. 21)
    • Q: “What is natural or spontaneous?” (pg. 22)
    • “This is a class on… actions and feelings. I believe in it.” (pg. 24) belief
    • “Feeling can be used to give a clue to the operating truth.” (pg. 33)
    • “She lost the sense of what she would have felt had she not been trying to feel something else.” (pg. 33) “painted on” versus “real self” (pg. 33-34)
    • “We all do a certain amount of acting… in two ways: (i) to change our outward appearance [surface acting] and (ii) deep acting [direct or indirect].” (pg. 35)
  • Emotional Labor
    • “Requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.” (pg. 7)
    • “For the flight attendant, the smiles are a part of her work.” (pg. 8) work = labor