The Managed Heart

In The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), Arlie Russell Hochschild explores the concept of emotional labor, or employers’ requirements for employees to manage and display certain emotions as part of their job. She focuses on the commodification of emotions, particularly in service industries, and examines its gendered nature and psychological impacts, revealing the social and economic implications of such demands on workers and society.

This guide refers to the 2003 Twentieth Anniversary Edition published by the University of California Press.

Summary

The Managed Heart examines the concept of emotional labor and its commodification, focusing on the impact of managing emotions in personal and professional contexts, particularly on women. In the Preface and Chapters 1-2, the author examines emotional labor and its implications across personal and professional domains. She reflects on her early observations of diplomatic interactions and the authenticity of emotions, which sparked her interest in how people manage feelings. Influenced by theorists like C. Wright Mills and Erving Goffman, the author delves into how societal norms and cultural expectations shape the different emotional demands on men versus women, using examples in professions like flight attendants and bill collectors. She explores the challenges workers face to maintain a sense of self while performing emotional labor, highlighting the tension between genuine feelings and the need to display “correct” emotions for a wage. The text introduces the concept of “feeling rules,” which govern emotional expressions in various contexts, and examines the psychological and personal costs of emotional labor, such as emotive dissonance and alienation. Through her research, the author discusses the social and economic implications of the commodification of emotions, emphasizing the pervasive impact on workers’ mental health and well-being.

Chapters 3-5 delve into the complexities of emotional labor by exploring how individuals manage their emotions in both personal and professional contexts. The author differentiates between surface acting, which alters only outward expressions, and deep acting, in which individuals strive to genuinely feel the emotions they display. The text examines the psychological and social costs of emotional labor, particularly how it can lead to emotive dissonance and estrangement from one’s true feelings. The author discusses the pervasive influence of “feeling rules”—cultural guidelines dictating appropriate emotions—and their enforcement by societal and organizational norms. Through various examples, she illustrates how emotional labor is gendered: Women often bear a disproportionate share of the burden, and institutions manipulate emotions to fit their needs. The author highlights the tension between genuine feelings and the necessity to display prescribed emotions, emphasizing the social and economic implications of commodifying human emotions.

In Chapters 6-7, the text examines how emotional labor is commodified in the public sphere, focusing on its impact on industries like aviation and debt collection. The author explores how companies transform employees’ private emotional systems into public commodities, requiring workers to display specific emotions to meet corporate goals. She highlights the psychological strain this creates and how it forces workers to align their genuine feelings with job requirements, often at the expense of their well-being. The author contrasts the role of flight attendants, who must exhibit constant friendliness, with that of bill collectors, who are expected to display aggression. She discusses how emotional labor varies across social classes and job types, emphasizing its prevalence and the significant yet often unrecognized stress it causes, and addresses how emotional labor infiltrates private life, blending the personal with the commercial and shaping how individuals manage their emotions in all areas of life.

Chapters 8-9 and the Afterword examine the gendered dimensions of emotional labor, highlighting how societal structures place different emotional demands on men and women, often burdening women with more emotion management both at work and home. She examines the impact of societal expectations, economic inequalities, and cultural norms on the regulation and display of emotions, noting how women’s emotional labor is often undervalued and misinterpreted as natural. In addition, the text explores the commodification of emotions, illustrating how competition and corporate interests transform personal feelings into marketable assets, which leads to emotive dissonance and authenticity challenges. The author discusses the various stances that workers adopt toward their emotional labor, the psychological costs of these stances, and the societal shift toward valuing genuine emotions in response to their widespread manipulation in the workplace. She concludes by reflecting on the societal implications of emotional labor, including its commercialization and the resulting impact on personal identity and human connections.