Emotional Labor and Wages 1 RUNNING HEAD : EMOTIONAL LABOR AND WAGES Emotional Labor Demands and Compensating Wage Differentials

The concept of emotional labor demands and their effects on workers has received considerable attention in recent years, with most studies concentrating on stress, burnout, satisfaction, or other affective outcomes. This study extends the literature by examining the relationship between emotional labor demands and wages at the occupational level by incorporating data on generalized work activities and work context features from the O*NET. Theories describing the expected effects of job demands and working conditions on wages are described. Results suggest that higher levels of emotional labor demands are associated with lower wage rates for jobs low in cognitive demands and higher wage rates for jobs high in cognitive demands. Implications of these findings are discussed. Emotional Labor and Wages 3 Emotional Labor Demands and Compensating Wage Differentials In numerous occupational roles, such as customer service, healthcare, protective services, and counseling occupations, employees are continually faced with emotionally charged encounters requiring specific emotional displays. Despite the pervasiveness of emotional experiences on the job, research has only recently begun to examine the consequences of emotions at work for workers and organizations (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996; Brief & Weiss, 2002). One area that is witnessing increased research attention is emotional labor, or the effort expended in expressing appropriate emotions which are not consistent with one’s actual emotions and not expressing inappropriate emotions that one is currently experiencing, as defined by role requirements of the job (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Wharton, 1993). One rationale for interest in emotional labor is its pervasiveness. Numerous occupations require workers to engage in frequent emotional displays. The required emotional displays of concerned flight attendants (Hochschild, 1983), friendly convenience store clerks (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988; Rafaeli, 1989), angry criminal investigators and bill collectors (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1991), and empathetic health care professionals (Miller, Stiff, & Ellis, 1988; Miller, Birkholt, Scott, & Stage, 1995) are examples. The emotions displayed by an employee may be inconsistent with their internal emotional state, creating emotional dissonance, the conflict between genuinely felt and expressed emotions. Individuals often fake and suppress emotions to be commensurate with emotional display rules on the job, and such dissonant emotional labor may lead to potentially adverse outcomes for the employee (Grandey, 2000; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Wharton, 1993). Research suggests that at least one-third of American workers engage in emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) and that for some workers, emotional labor is a component Emotional Labor and Wages 4 of two-thirds of workplace communication (Mann, 1999). The pervasiveness of emotional labor may be due, in part, to the increase in the service economy creating jobs with emotional labor demands. From an organizational perspective, employees’ adherence to emotional labor demands is valuable due to its potential benefits in achieving organizational outcomes, particularly in service occupations (Grandey & Brauburger, 2002; Pugh, 2001, Tolich, 1993). From the worker’s perspective, emotional labor demands have effects on relevant job and psychological outcomes such as job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and well-being; these effects are typically negative (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Morris & Feldman, 1996; Pugliesi, 1999; Wharton, 1993). Given the purported negative consequences, one might question why workers would accept jobs with high demand for emotional labor. Seminal work in the field by Hochschild (1983) suggests that emotional labor is “sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value” (p. 7). However, whether jobs high in emotional labor demands actually do evidence gains in the form of wages has not been explicitly examined and the limited empirical evidence has been mixed. Adelmann’s research (1995) suggests that a sample of table servers perceive that emotional labor “results in better tips. ” However, a study by Wharton (1993) found that employees in occupations classified as those where emotional labor is performed have lower income than employees in occupations where emotional labor is not performed. Despite these wage relevant findings, the studies described above were limited to a small number of occupations and organizations and did not control for other job characteristics related to wages. These studies were not specifically designed to test the interplay of emotional labor demands and wages. The relationship between emotional labor and wages has never been studied explicitly. Emotional Labor and Wages 5 The current study aims to examine emotional labor demands as they relate to wages to determine whether the “labor” of emotional labor evidences wage returns in the form of compensating differentials. The study is unique because much of the empirical work on emotional labor has been conducted primarily at the individual employee level of analysis, rather than the occupational level. Although an individual-level emphasis is informative, given that the emotional labor demands reside within the job rather than the person, analysis at the occupational level is most appropriate. Furthermore, Hochschild (1983) originally focused on the occupational level of analysis and included a classification of occupations based on their emotional labor demands. We examine the effects of emotional labor demands while controlling for traditional factors related to wages, including labor market factors like unemployment and unionization, which could explain significant variance in wages. We also consider how emotional labor may interact with other job features; in particular, the interaction between emotional labor demands and the cognitive demands of the job. We review conceptualizations of emotional labor, its role in organizational life, and posit the effect of emotional labor demands on wages. Emotional Labor Following Hochschild’s (1983) seminal piece in which she coined the term “emotion labor,” several conceptualizations of emotional labor have been proposed (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Brotheridge & Lee, 1998; Grandey, 2000; Mann, 1999; Morris & Feldman, 1996). Some conceptual ambiguity persists, but each conceptualization has in common the general underlying assumption that emotional labor involves managing emotions to be consistent with organizational or occupational “display rules” (see Grandey, 2000 for a recent overview) regardless of whether they are discrepant with internal feelings; emotional labor is “the act of Emotional Labor and Wages 6 displaying appropriate emotion (i.e., conforming with a display rule)” (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; p. 90). These display rules and the emotional labor they solicit are present in a number of occupations and generate emotional labor demands. For example, service personnel are typically required to display positive emotions (e.g., enthusiasm, happiness), to promote goodwill, patronage, and spending, while keeping to themselves their negative feelings (Hochschild, 1983; Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Brauburger, 2002). In contrast to service personnel, other occupational groups may require different forms of emotional expression to achieve desired objectives. For example, police interrogators and bill collectors are often required to display negative emotions (e.g., irritation, aggravation) to gain compliance from debtors and suspects (Stenross & Kleinman, 1989; Sutton, 1991). The emotional labor demands present in these and many occupations, and the emotional dissonance they produce, are of primary interest. Similar to cognitive dissonance, emotional dissonance, or the discrepancy between felt and expressed emotions, creates an unstable state within the individual and may lead to such negative outcomes as estrangement between self and true feelings (Hochschild, 1983), jobrelated stress (Adelmann, 1995; Pugliesi, 1999; Wharton, 1993), and emotional exhaustion (Morris & Feldman, 1997). Much of the research on the outcomes of emotional labor has centered on these negative attitudinal, psychological, and behavioral outcomes for employees. There has not been attention to whether the emotional labor demands and ensuing emotional dissonance contributes in any meaningful way to the pecuniary outcomes for employees engaged in emotionally laborious jobs. Using the literature on compensating wage differentials, we posit a rationale for a compensating wage differential of emotional labor demands. Emotional Labor and Wages 7 Emotional Labor Demands as Compensating Wage Differentials As first proposed by Adam Smith (1776) in The Wealth of Nations, the theory of compensating wage differentials suggests that wages vary across jobs to offset non-pecuniary advantages and disadvantages of job characteristics. Thus, the theory provides a possible explanation of wage differences across jobs. Jobs differ in terms of such characteristics as educational requirements, job stress, working hours, physical effort, and level of risk. Workers selecting jobs will consider these characteristics in addition to the pecuniary characteristics (i.e., wages and benefits). If two occupations have largely equivalent job characteristics and equivalent wages, except that, for example, one job requires greater physical effort, employees will migrate to the job with lower physical demands. As migration occurs to the less demanding job, wages in the less demanding job will fall and wages in the more demanding job will rise until a wage differential exists that is large enough to compensate for this difference in physical demands. The compensating wage differential is the amount that an employee must be compensated to accept the additional work effort for the occupation. Ceteris paribus, absent such a wage premium paid to