The International Journal of Indian Psychology

ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)

Volume 7, Issue 2, DIP: 18.01.061/20190702
DOI: 10.25215/0702.061
http://www.ijip.in | April - June, 2019
Article

Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

Lal, R. 1*, Sekhri, R. 2

ABSTRACT
It is the supreme art of the teacher to inculcate joy in creative expression and knowledge,
rightly said by ‘Albert Einstein’. Teaching profession is one with the highest requirements for
emotional labour, since the communication with the clients (the students, the parents,
representatives of the community) is invariable and last more than any other type of client-
employee interaction. Teachers are considered as professionals and technical occupation
needs high emotional labour (Adelman, 1989). Research on emotional labour among teachers
can equip them with certain strategies and skills to manage their own emotion, promote their
and youth’s mental health. As we know that teachers have a vital role in nation building
because the future of India is totally in their hands to change the character of future
generations. An attempt has been made to know how to channelize the emotional labour of
teachers (discordant-congruence/felt-displayed emotions) that can have a direct impact on the
mental health of students. The study is an effort to increase the current level of knowledge of
the existing literature on emotional labour by proposing a model that can facilitate the
teachers to display ‘Just Right Emotion’ at their workplace. Ample research has revealed the
positive consequences of emotional labour while emphasizing the importance of congruent
emotional states: Deep acting and Emotional consonance. Research reveals that the genuine
acting of emotions leads to increased interpersonal acceptance in the workplace. Not only this
it has been observed that expressing the deep emotion to students have encouraged their
further connection with the teachers instilling the feelings of competence, achievement
motivation among students.

Keywords: Emotional Labour, Instincts, Emotional strategies, Emotional consonance-

dissonance, Deep ace acting

Emotional labour is the process by which employees handle their true feelings in order to
express organizationally desired emotional displays. Emotions are core components of
individual and collective processes in organization, including workplace motivation,
leadership (George & Brief, 1996), leadership (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010),
workplace attitudes (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), conflict management and negotiation
(Fulmer & Barry, 2004; van Kleef, De Dreu, & Manstead, 2004), and team functioning
(Barsade, 2002; Kelly & Barsade, 2001). The term emotional labour was coined by the
American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. She was the one to initiate research on the
1
Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychology, P.G.G.C.G-11, Chandigarh, India
*Responding Author
Received: May 15, 2019; Revision Received: May 30, 2019; Accepted: June 4, 2019
© 2019, Lal, R., & Sekhri, R.; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

emotional work of flight attendants. She defined emotional labour as the management of
feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display. She described emotional
labour has an exchange value (Hochschild, 1983). According to Hochschild, jobs with
emotional labour have three criteria; 1) they require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact
with the public 2) they require the worker to produce an emotional state in the client or
customer 3) they allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree
of control over the emotional activities of employees (Hochschild, 1983). Hochschild's
perspective on emotional labour was an outgrowth of the dramaturgical perspective made
popular by Ervin Goffman (1959). The dramaturgical perspective on behavior in
organizations focuses on customer interactions as providing the performance stage for
employees' impression management skills. Employees' efforts to manage their emotions
appropriately for their respective organizational roles are seen as performances on the
organizational stage. This emotion management is seen as a central part of the employee's job
performance and meanings toward meeting organizational goals.

Ashforth & Humphrey (1993) contributions to the area of emotional labour have propelled
the study of emotions forward, since they include the role of social identity and integrate it
into the study of emotions and their expression at work. They defined emotional labour as
“the act of displaying the appropriate emotion” (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). Their
definition differs from Hochschild's (1983), since it emphasizes the actual behavior rather
than the presumed emotions underlying the behavior.

Morris & Feldman (1996) conceptualize emotional labour in terms of four distinct
dimensions; 1) the frequency of appropriate display 2) attentiveness to required display rules
3) variety of emotions required to be displayed 4) the emotional dissonance generated as a
result of having to express organizationally desired emotions that are not genuinely felt.
Later, in their empirical research on antecedents and consequences of emotional labour,
emotional labour was identified into three dimensions: 1) frequency 2) duration 3) emotional
dissonance.

Brotheridge & Lee (2003) developed the six faceted Emotional Labour Scale (ELS) based on
the theories of Hochschild (1983) and Morris & Feldman (1996). Their ELS measures the
intensity, frequency, the variety of emotional display, surface acting, deep acting and the
duration of the the interaction. Examining preceding researches dealing with emotional
labour dimensions, since Hochschild first suggested surface acting and deep acting,
emotional labour dimensions have not been clearly determined until today. Although plenty
of researches on emotional labour dimensions are presently being conducted, no agreement
has been brought about yet. Many of researches have dealt with emotional labour dimensions
by using surface acting and deep acting that only focus on emotional expressions, and the
results are also limited. Thus, this research, to approach emotional labour multi-
dimensionally, composed emotional labour dimensions with surface acting, deep acting,
frequency, strength, and diversity.

Hochschild (1979, 1983) categorized those performing emotional labour based on the 'acting'
they were performing. Hochschild describes two types of emotional acting: surface acting
and deep acting. Surface acting involves an employee’s simulating emotions that are not
actually felt, by changing their outward appearances (i.e, facial expression, gestures, or voice
tone) when exhibiting required emotions. Deep acting occurs when an employee's feelings do

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 Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

not fit the situation; then they use their training or past experience to work up appropriate
emotions.

Hochschild discussed surface acting and deep acting as key features of emotional labour,
however, several researchers suggested that emotional labour is a multidimensional construct
and may involve strategies other than surface acting and deep acting.

Ashforth & Humphrey (1993) argued that employees must do surface acting or deep acting in
order to express the expected emotions. However, they took the definition of emotional labor
a step further by including a third category of emotional labour called the expression of
genuine emotion. They stated that conceptualizing emotional labour as surface acting and
deep acting alone dismisses the possibility of employees spontaneously and genuinely
experiencing and displaying appropriate emotions.

In an effort to integrate previous perspectives, Brotheridge & Grandey (2002) restructured

emotional labor into two categories. One focuses on the characteristic of the job and the other
emphasizes employees' emotion management process. The former is called “job-focused
emotional labour' which includes the frequency, duration, variety, and intensity of emotional
labour and display rules. The latter is called “employee-focused emotional labour” which
includes surface acting and deep acting.

Freudian concepts in the modern era: Its effect on Teachers’ Emotional Labour
The researchers tend to assume that teaching is similar to other occupations in the service
section that require employees to manage their emotions and emotional display. Therefore,
teachers should perform emotional labour. Theoretically, performing emotional labour will
generate emotional dissonance. In this sense, if teaching involves emotional labour, teaching
should be per se unpleasant, frustrating, and even alienating. However, many studies found
that emotional labour of teaching would bring desirable outcomes to teachers, such as:
increase in job satisfaction, commitment, self-esteem, work effectiveness and at the same
time the positive energy that will flow in the students will help the youth to work on their
constructive instinct which will help them to sublimate their aggressive impulses in socially
acceptable behaviour.

Effect of teachers’ emotional labour on Teenagers in school

The school climate is a highly influential environment. The school climate is widely defined
as the psychosocial context within which teachers work. The school climate is a complex
construct that includes such elements as the teachers’ perceptions of cooperation among
colleagues, students’ motivation and behaviour, school resources and innovation, and
decision-making authority. Research provides evidence that perceived school climate and
emotional labour are predictors of teacher burnout and that the school climate may influence
emotional labour. Research findings revealed that the teachers’ perception of the school
climate has a negative effect on surface acting and a positive effect on deep acting.

Freud postulated the existence of an aggressive instinct or drive. In fact, he theorized that all
people have a death instinct: Thanatos, the drive toward death and self-destructive behaviour.
Self-destructive behaviour is, however, unacceptable in modern society (Weininger, 1996).
As with socially unacceptable sexual impulses, this energy must either be released or be dealt
with in another, more socially appropriate manner. Whereas some, maybe even most,

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 Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

individual repress this instinct and are not conscious of it, other people may utilize other
defense mechanisms to deter Thanatos.

Strategies of emotional labour

Gross (1999) defined emotion regulation as an effort that can be conscious and unconscious
to change one or more aspects of emotion. Gross identifies two forms of emotion regulation:
antecedent-focused and response-focused.
a) Antecedent-focused emotion regulation involves the individual reassessing the source
of the emotion (e.g., a nurse reminding herself to feel sympathetic toward an insolent
patient; the initial emotion of irritation is replaced with sympathy upon the
reevaluation of the source of the emotion).
b) Response-focused emotion regulation involves the individual manipulating their
physiology, facial and/or bodily expressions, behaviors, and cognitions once the
emotion has already registered (e.g., a teacher attempting to fake a positive emotion
toward a recalcitrant student; Morgan, 2002).

Gross (1998) found individuals experience more psychological strain when engaging in a
response-focused emotion regulation strategy (faking or suppressing their genuine emotions),
than when they either exercise in an antecedent-focused strategy or do not regulate their
emotions. Further, Morgan (2002) found this pattern of effects extends to job-related
outcomes as well; response-focused emotion regulation strategies (e.g., suppression or faking
of emotions) led to decreased job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

All organizations have both expressed and implied guidelines for employee conduct based on
the position the employee holds. Within these guidelines are relatively strict expectations of
acceptable and unacceptable emotions to display at work; these expectations are called
display rules (Diefendorff, Erickson, Grandey, & Dahling, 2011). Emotional labour strategies
have been differentiated based on the extent to which they involve an antecedent-focused or
response-focused emotion regulation strategy. This distinction has important implications for
the resulting emotional state. With antecedent-focused strategies, the resulting emotional state
is congruous—felt and expressed emotions are inherently consistent. Whereas energy may be
required initially to adjust felt emotions, no further energy drain is incurred once the
emotions are in line. Conversely, with response-focused strategies, the effort is not expended
to change the felt emotion but rather is continuously expended to mask true emotions so that
emotive displays conform to expectations.

Emotional Congruence-Discordance continuum

A lot of research has been conducted in exploring emotional labour strategies and researchers
have articulated five emotional labour strategies. Two of these strategies fall toward the end
of the continuum reflecting congruence between felt emotions and required/displayed
emotive behavior (emotional consonance and deep acting) and three fall along the opposite
end of continuum which reflects discordance between felt emotions and required/displayed
emotion-expressive behavior (surface acting, emotional dissonance, emotional suppression).

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 Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

Table No.1 Five emotional Labour states

Congruence Filter Discordance

Emotional Deep Surface Emotional Emotional

Consonance Acting Acting Dissonance Suppression

Deep-Ace
Acting

• Congruent emotional states

These states are the psychological conditions wherein an individual’s genuine felt emotions
are consistent with his/her expressed emotions. Research on emotional labour elaborates two
constructs—deep acting and emotional consonance—each reflecting aspects of emotional
congruence.
1. Deep acting: An individual practicing deep acting does not simply display the
appropriate emotions, but actually internalizes the mandated emotion; deep acting is
the process of ‘‘modifying internal affect so that it matches with [the] outward
expressions’’ demanded by the job–role requirements (Hochschild, 1983; Spencer &
Rupp, 2009, p. 429). This realignment resolves the initial emotional discordance,
resulting in an emotional state where felt and displayed emotions are congruent.
2. Emotional Consonance: It refers to emotional labour states where the individual
expresses his/her genuine felt emotions (Yugo, 2009; Zammuner & Galli, 2005b).
Consonance is similar to deep acting in that there is a congruence between feeling and
expressed and emotions. The notable difference is that with consonance there is no
need to expend any energy-regulating emotions because natural emotions are in line
with those expected in the job context.

• Discordant emotional states

These states are the psychological conditions wherein an individual’s authentic felt emotions
are in conflict with his/her expressed emotions. Research on emotional labour elaborates
three constructs—surface acting, dissonance, and suppression—each reflecting aspects of
emotional discordance

Emotional Consonance Filter Emotional Dissonance

Emotional
suppression

Deep acting Deep Ace acting Surface acting

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 Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession

A filter named as Deep ace acting will help teachers to select and use the required amount of
surface and deep emotions so that its impact on students and colleagues will not hamper their
rapport building with them. Further, it may lessen the countertransference of negative
emotions by students towards teachers. It might channelize the negative energy of students
from the compulsive act of taking revenge from teachers as of nowadays we have come
across the vulnerability of students with deviant behaviour and heinous acts of taking away
the life of their gurus for being firm on discipline and academic record. Through the analysis
of different studies, Sutton and Wheatley (2003) conclude that teachers yelling can provoke
harmful emotions of guilt, shame, and inferiority in students. Maintaining a balance between
emotions can help both teacher-student relationships to be friendly and disciplined at the
same time. The Deep ace acting mode can channelize and release the suppression of emotions
in the surface acting mode and reduce the harmful side effects on health on both the
population.

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Acknowledgments
The authors profoundly appreciate all the people who have successfully contributed in
ensuring this paper in place. Their contributions are acknowledged however their names
cannot be mentioned.

Conflict of Interest
The authors carefully declare this paper to bear not a conflict of interests

How to cite this article: Lal, R., & Sekhri, R. (2019). Study of Emotional Challenges in
Teaching Profession. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 7(2), 507-513.
DIP:18.01.061/20190702, DOI:10.25215/0702.061

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 513