Smiling for a living takes a real psychological toll, even when the smile is genuine

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild studied flight attendants trained to manufacture warmth on command and named the hidden work involved 'emotional labor': managing your own feelings to produce an emotional display your job requires. Workers who fake it outright feel alienated from their own face; those who try to genuinely feel the required emotion risk losing touch with what they actually feel underneath. Either way, the labor is real even though nobody sees it as work.

— Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling — University of California Press, 1983
Go deeper: get the book →

One credited idea per card. No filler. Swipe the rest in Savvy.

Keep swiping — it's free Works right in your browser. No app store needed.

More Psychology

All Psychology cards →

Five ideas worth knowing, every week

The week's best cards and a puzzle, credited as always. Free, unsubscribe any time.