What is the main message of The Managed Heart?

The main message of The Managed Heart is an exploration of emotional labor and its impact on individuals in the workplace.

Who is the author of The Managed Heart?

The author of The Managed Heart is Arlie Russell Hochschild.

Economics

The Managed Heart Book Summary - The Managed Heart Book explained in key points

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The Managed Heart summary

Name: The Managed Heart
Rating: 3.5 (40 reviews)
Author: Arlie Russell Hochschild

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Commercialization of Human Feeling

3.5 (40 ratings)

12 mins

Brief summary

"The Managed Heart" by Arlie Russell Hochschild is a sociological study that explores the emotional labor involved in jobs where workers must suppress their true feelings and display false ones, often resulting in burnout and alienation.

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Gender & Sexuality

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The Managed Heart
Summary of 5 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 5

What’s in it for me? Develop a new appreciation for emotional labor.

Have you ever marveled at how waiters and waitresses maintain their upbeat attitude and positive smile for a seemingly endless stream of customers? Often seen as an unskilled work, waiters and anyone else working in customer service are in fact using an essential skill we don’t often think about: managing feelings.

But this emotional labor implies more than simply keeping one’s cool, not getting upset or holding back an untimely snicker in everyday situations; it is a matter of actively invoking feelings, understanding your own feelings and those of the people around you, as well as the societal rules that affect them. Let’s take a closer look at how this works and why it has so often been overlooked.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how feelings signal what is hidden within us;
why women do more emotional labor than men; and
how feelings can be a bit like money.

Emotional labor plays a central role in our personal and professional lives, but we don’t usually talk about it openly.

From baristas to flight attendants to supermarket cashiers, we expect service with a smile from workers across many industries. But as anyone who’s worked in a customer-facing job knows, faking a friendly attitude all day long is difficult, to say the least. And yet, it’s one of those job requirements that’s so ubiquitous, employers rarely think to name it.

Sociologists studying the world of work, on the other hand, call this emotional labor. Emotional labor is when we consciously manage our feelings to ensure they’re appropriate for a particular commercial or social setting.

The work done by flight attendants is a powerful example of emotional labor. During their training, flight attendants are taught to smile “genuinely,” emphasizing that this outward display of a good mood can’t appear forced. Attendants must be warm and cheerful when serving food and drinks to passengers.

A charming “How are you doing today?” is part of the service, too. Small talk and smiles might seem trivial, but when they aren’t there, we notice. Without the emotional work that flight attendants put in, many passengers would consider their service inadequate.

Another profession where emotional labor plays a central role is, of course, acting. On stage, an actor demonstrates his talent by creating the illusion of experiencing emotions that aren’t his own, that he has perhaps never even felt.

However, there’s a crucial difference between the emotional labor of actors and flight attendants: while theater involves emotional labor in the pursuit of art, the flight industry’s emotional labor policies are engineered by corporations that, above all, want to make a profit.

Our emotions reveal our underlying attitudes toward others, which might clash with the rules we’ve been taught about feelings.

When you feel sad, excited or bored, your emotions don’t just reflect your current mood – they’re also powerful signals that reveal what the people and things in our lives mean to us. Let’s illustrate this with an example.

Say, for instance, a university student agrees to host a party with an old friend from high school. Soon, though, they find themselves dreading the thought of it. Why? Because, deep down, they just don’t want to be associated with their old friend anymore.

Emotional displays are currency whose value fluctuates depending on your position in a hierarchy.

Have you ever done a favor for a friend and felt like they should have shown a little more gratitude? In our society, feelings are often exchanged as gifts or forms of payments. Let’s explore this with another example.

Say a new intern needs help with a task and seeks advice from a more experienced colleague. Afterward, the intern might “pay” for the expert’s time and wisdom with a comment like “Thanks so much Sarah! I really appreciate it; I know how busy you are right now.” By doing this, he acknowledges that he isn’t really “worth” the expert’s time, and compensates for this by giving them an ego boost. In the end, both parties profit from an exchange like this.

Women are forced to do more emotional labor than men because of unequal power dynamics.

Think back to your childhood. Which of your parents took more responsibility for things like organizing your playdates, purchasing gifts and remembering friends’ and family members’ birthdays? In most cases, the answer is our mother. How come?

In terms of power, status and independent access to money, women are generally less well off. For example, statistics from 1980 show that around 50 percent of American men received an annual salary over $15,000 – as opposed to only 6 percent of women. While the situation has of course improved since then, inequality still exists between men and women.

Women’s opinions are dismissed more often, while their jobs are also more emotionally taxing.

So far, we’ve looked at the way in which women do more emotional labor than men. But what are the effects of such an imbalance on the women doing this additional labor?

First of all, women find that their opinions are more quickly ignored or rejected than men’s. One reason for this is that the feelings that women carefully manage are taken to be involuntary or uncontrollable – think of the way good actors don’t seem like they’re acting at all.

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What is The Managed Heart about?

The Managed Heart (1983) is the seminal sociological text that introduced the concept of emotional labor. These blinks reveal how we adjust our emotions to our advantage in social and professional contexts, and shed light on the risks and consequences of this form of self-management.

The Managed Heart Review

The Managed Heart (1983) explores the emotional labor involved in performing jobs where workers are required to display specific emotions. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It uncovers the hidden emotional toll that certain jobs can have on individuals, shedding light on an aspect of work rarely discussed.
By analyzing various industries and sharing personal stories, the book provides an in-depth understanding of how emotional labor manifests in different contexts.
It challenges conventional notions of work and emotions, offering a fresh perspective that will make readers question the emotional demands placed on them in their own careers.

Best quote from The Managed Heart

What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

—Arlie Russell Hochschild

Who should read The Managed Heart?

Readers working customer-facing jobs
Students interested in gender issues in the workplace
Working mothers frustrated with the expectations they face

About the Author

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. A renowned author, Hochschild has written three New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year: The Second Shift, The Managed Heart, and The Time Bind. Her latest book is Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.

Categories with The Managed Heart

Economics Psychology

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