The Context of Care

15 The Context of Care: Reconsidering Culture, Structure, and the Performance of Emotional Labor Among Registered Nurses Rebecca J. Erickson University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA

ABSTRACT The emotion-management perspective first introduced by Hochschild (1979; 1983b) has been consistently characterized as a “cultural” approach. This classification is not surprising given the emphasis placed on how emotion norms and feeling rules enter into, and help to construct, emotional experience. In this chapter, however, I reconsider the cultural label in light of Hochschild’s original theoretical formulation and recent sociological theorizing about the structure–culture distinction. In so doing, I propose that theory and research on emotion, and particularly emotion management, would benefit from reframing the approach as “contextual” as opposed to cultural or structural. Through an analysis of the emotion management experiences of 1158 registered nurses, I provide support for this proposal by showing how structure (e.g., gender, race, job structure) and culture (e.g., feeling rules) combine to differentially affect nurses’ experience of emotion and their performance of both surface and deep Social Structure and Emotion

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acting. Consistent with Hochschild’s original statement that the emotion-management perspective be used as a lens through which to examine social structure, as well as self and interaction, the results provide new insights into the gendered and racialized performance of emotional labor and the multidimensional context that shapes emotional experience. Key Words: Emotional Labor, Emotion, Nursing, Culture, Social Psychology

Forgetfulness of the questions that are the starting points of inquiry leads us to ignore the substantive assumptions “buried” in our concepts and commits us to a one-sided view of reality. —Dennis Wrong (1961)

In their introduction to the Millennium Special Issue of Social Psychology Quarterly, Smith-Lovin and Molm (2000:281) noted that a number of papers pointed to “ways in which sociological social psychology should reconnect with the fundamental questions and interests of sociology as a whole.” Hollander and Howard (2000) further observe that because social psychology has proceeded relatively independently from sociology as a whole, the broader discipline has not benefited as much as it might from social psychological insight (also Collins 2004:103). Although some of the blame for this lack of integration should certainly be placed on non-social psychological sociologists, I hope to advance further discussion of these issues by exploring one potential “fault line” located within emotional labor theory and research. Specifically, I suggest that we need to reconsider the “cultural” label consistently attached to studies of emotional labor. In so doing, I illustrate some of the ways that our acceptance of this label may have led to the relative neglect of Hochschild’s (1979) initial points of inquiry and, as a result, may have limited the ability of emotional labor researchers to ask the questions and pursue the answers that ground our identities in sociological social psychology. To explore this possibility further, I empirically examine the extent to which diffuse status characteristics and indicators of proximate occupational structure and culture influence the experience and management of emotion among registered nurses. The findings of this study suggest that social scientists’ ability to understand the effects of the context of care requires that more systematic research attention be paid to the ways in which proximate structures, as well as diffuse status characteristics, affect the performance of emotional labor.

COMMON POINTS OF INQUIRY: RECONSIDERING THE STRUCTURE–CULTURE DISTINCTION There are no issues more central to sociology than those of social reproduction and social change. Understanding the simultaneous operation of these

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processes has motivated sociological theory and research since the discipline’s inception and continues to motivate much of it today (Calhoun, Rojek, and Turner 1995; Comte 1896). If sociologists charge their social psychological colleagues with not addressing the central questions of the discipline, then the fault must lie with our ability to further social scientific understanding of reproduction and change. Sociologists of emotion know this is far from the case. From the earliest statements in the 1970s to the American Sociological Association Emotion Section’s most recent contribution awards, emotions scholars have been centrally concerned with examining how emotions serve to both bring people together and tear them apart or how emotions figure into processes of social reproduction and social change (Collins 2004; Turner and Stets 2005; see also Chapter 18 by Turner). Nonetheless, it is open for debate whether emotion researchers have consistently characterized their contributions in such general sociological terms (Shilling 2002). To be sure, one can find a number of recent claims regarding the general sociological importance of emotion that make use of the dualisms commonly found in more general theoretical statements. Barbalet (2002:3) identifies that the statement “emotions link structure and agency” serves as a crucial sociological proposition. Shilling (2002:11) also notes that emotions are central to “the key sociological issues of social order and action,” and Collins (2004:103) argues that emotions hold society together and mobilize conflict (also see Chapter 18 by Turner). The use of dualisms such as agency–structure and action–order clearly parallel statements found in the writings of social theorists more generally. The tendency to frame the micro–macro relation in this way parallels the work of social theorists in another way as well – that is, in the pronounced absence of references to culture (Hays 1994). I raise this point not because I think sociologists of emotion are not attentive to culture (quite the opposite), but merely to raise the possibility that examining how social theorists have framed the structure–culture–agency relation may provide unique insights into the strengths and weaknesses of how emotions scholarship has developed over the past three decades. The development of separate research strands within the sociology of emotions has certainly led to theoretical and empirical gains (Smith-Lovin 2005). However, this developmental approach has also led to some unintended negative consequences. Instead of being far removed from central sociological concerns, however, these developments parallel recent theoretical trends, outcomes, and concerns within sociology (and sociological social psychology) as a whole. Classic sociological theorists often emphasized the role of social structure in understanding processes of social reproduction and social change (Fligstein 2001). Concisely captured by Wrong’s (1961) depiction of the “oversocialized conception of man in modern sociology,” this structural emphasis remained a prominent feature of much sociological theory produced during the twentieth century; its dominance finally sparking theoretical movements explicitly aimed at reclaiming the power of individual agency (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Blumer

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1969). During the past two decades, social theorists have spent a great deal of time demonstrating that these countervailing tendencies are not new (Giddens 1991; Hewitt 1989). Nonetheless, there remains little theoretical consensus about how to connect agents and structures, or even on how best to conceptualize the terms of the debate (Alexander et al. 1987; Coleman 1986; Fligstein 2001; Huber 1991; Sewell 1992). Part of the problem may be due to assumptions underlying how structure and agency are conceptualized and to how both of these concepts are theorized in regard to culture. Hays (1994) argues, for example, that writers often define social structure through a series of contrasts with both agency and culture. Because of this definitional tendency, the interconnections between the concepts tend to be lost and the differences between them heightened. Structure is systematic, patterned, constraining, static, and collective while agency is contingent, random, active, and individual. In maintaining a tradition of distinguishing culture from structure (Hays 1994; MacLeod and Lively 2003), theorists simultaneously reinforce a privileged image of structure and structural accounts by characterizing them as objective, material, external, and available for scientific observation. In contrast, these same discourses portray culture as subjective, internal, interpretive, and operating as a weaker counterpart to the more solid and scientific structural approaches. This tendency within more general social theory is similar to the discursive process found within the sociology of emotions. A process that, in seeking to specify the scope of its subject matter over the past three decades, has reinforced the distinctions between approaches rather than seeking out points of overlap. Paralleling similar changes within social theory (Hays 1994; Rubinstein 2001) and sociological social psychology (MacLeod and Lively 2003), emotions scholars have started to break down some of the assumed divisions between approaches (Lawler and Thye 1999; Simon and Nath 2004; Turner and Stets 2005). The motivation to move forward with deconstructing presumed differences, along with the development of more synthetic approaches, may not continue, however, if the empirical utility and theoretical significance of such endeavors is not forthcoming. In what follows, I reconsider theory and research related to emotion management to illustrate some of the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of the cultural label having been accepted as a sufficient characterization of Hochschild’s (1979, 1983b) original points of inquiry. In then analyzing data on the emotional labor performed by registered nurses, I conduct the first quantitative examination of the structural and cultural correlates of surface and deep acting. These results indicate that further efforts must be made to understand the structural antecedents of emotion management processes and provide further support for Hochschild’s (1990) statement that how we manage emotion can provide unique insights into how larger systems of stratification are sustained and changed.

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FROM STRUCTURE TO CULTURE AND BACK AGAIN: (RE)FRAMING EMOTION MANAGEMENT RESEARCH Over the past two decades, every author reviewing the sociology of emotions has characterized the emotion-management perspective as “cultural” (Kemper 1993; Smith-Lovin 1995; Stets 2003; Thoits 1989; Turner and Stets 2005). This label has gone largely unchallenged despite the fact that Hochschild entitled her first major piece on the subject “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure” (1979, emphasis added) and began The Managed Heart (1983b) with an example drawn from Marx’s Das Kapital. In remarks commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the publication of The Managed Heart, Smith-Lovin (2003) also suggests that Hochschild’s most important contribution may lie in having shown us how emotions are cultural phenomenon. However, SmithLovin goes on to note that sociologists of emotion have failed to develop the full promise of Hochschild’s insights. Specifically, emotions scholars have largely failed to study “social structural sources” of variation in emotion management and emotional labor (Smith-Lovin 2003:7; also see Gibson 1997). As suggested above, one reason for this failure may lie with the relatively unquestioned acceptance of the claim that studying the performance of emotion management is a cultural enterprise (Copp 1998; Gordon 1990).1 While adopting a cultural approach would not seem to preclude an examination of structural variation or influence, the theoretical and empirical meanings implied by the cultural label (i.e., internal, hidden, requiring interpretation) may have limited research on emotion management in just this way. As Smith-Lovin (2003:7) observes, we have learned a great deal about emotion culture but we have not moved past Hochschild’s “initial Marxist-inspired insight – that emotional labor exists – to find out more about how it is related to social structure.” This gap in our understanding is somewhat surprising given Hochschild’s (1983a) insistence that her approach is concerned with the effects of social structure. Hochschild consistently expressed this view across more than a decade of written work on emotion management (Hochschild 1979, 1983b, 1990). She clearly emphasized this point in 1990 when identifying the path that future researchers ought to pursue, stating that connecting studies of emotion to broader sociological concerns of reproduction and change requires the examination of how diffuse status characteristics (e.g., gender, race, and class) relate to individual 1

As Lively (2000) notes, emotions theorists have been more likely to discuss the importance of structural influences on emotion management processes. However, these theoretical statements have not translated into structural characteristics being investigated as direct influences on surface or deep acting processes. For example, studies examining the antecedents of emotional labor within both sociology and organizational psychology have emphasized the influence of culture (i.e., emotion norms or rules) rather than structure (Diefendorff, Croyle, and Gosserand 2005; Grandey 2000; Lively 2000; Morris and Feldman 1996).

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strategies for action and feeling (Hochschild 1990; also see Collins 2004). Despite the consistency of her statements, authors describing Hochschild’s perspective have downplayed this facet of her work in favor of emphasizing the role of cultural beliefs, emotion norms, and feeling and display rules guide the emotion management process (Smith-Lovin 1995; Thoits 1989; Turner and Stets 2005; cf. Thoits 2004). Given Hochschild’s statements, the cultural label attached to the perspective inspired by her work is at best incomplete. This situation also leads me to wonder whether the emphasis placed on emotion norms, along with the relative neglect of structural influences, has more to do with the theoretical and methodological implications of the cultural label than with truly believing that this emphasis accurately reflects the social context within which emotion management occurs. Paralleling a tendency that MacLeod and Lively (2003:82) find in sociological social psychology more generally – and quite consistent with the foundational debates of the 1980s (Hochschild 1983a; Kemper 1981) – emotion management scholars have tended to take an either/or approach to structural and cultural influences on emotion. Because the influence of structural variation on emotion management has remained in the background, investigators tend to operate as if a broad normative consensus exists regarding the content of emotion norms and the extent to which they apply to the population being studied (Gordon 1990; Thoits 1989). Hochschild’s (1979, 1983b) early examples probably reinforced this tendency by assuming that all social groups hold similar emotion norms for funerals and weddings and that gendered occupational norms are similarly recognized and internalized by all women performing those occupations.2 As a result, emotion management researchers have been less likely to examine how diffuse status characteristics (other than gender) may, along with proximate structural positions, alter the extent to which actors are held (and hold themselves) accountable for adhering to particular feeling rules through surface and/or deep acting processes.3 So while there have been a number of studies targeting the emotional labor performed within specific occupations (Erickson and Wharton 1997; Leidner 1993; Lively 2000; Pierce 1995; Pugliesi and Shook 1997; Smith and Kleinman 1989; Sutton 1991; Sutton and Rafaeli 1988; see also Chapter 16 by Lively), researchers have not critically examined the underlying assumption that cultural, organizational, or professional norms, values, and beliefs influence emotion management processes more than structure and that, in studying emotion management, culture rather than structure should be of primary concern. 2 The problem may also have been exacerbated by the tendency for authors (including Hochschild 1979, 1983) to frame Goffman as an interactionist rather than emphasizing the more structural implications of Goffman’s work (see Collins 2004; Giddens 1988; Gonos 1977). 3 Given her more recent work (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002; Hochschild 2000, 2003), I doubt that Hochschild would universalize emotion norms in the same way today. However, at the time of her initial writing, the third wave feminist movement – that which raised awareness of the profound differences among women and the implications of intersectionality (Hill Collins 1991; Glenn 1992; hooks 1989) had not yet taken hold.

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One unanticipated result of this tendency is that studies of emotion management are not generally viewed as contributing to structural knowledge of emotion and, simultaneously, “structural” examinations of emotion tend to focus on emotional experience rather than emotion management. The tendency to separate structural and cultural approaches to the study of emotion and emotion management leads to unintended restrictions on the questions being asked and the methods being used to examine how social contexts might relate to emotional experiences along with their management. As social structure and personality researchers are well aware, there are also serious political implications of adopting a strictly cultural approach to social phenomena. When social problems (e.g., the negative outcomes associated with emotional labor performance) are identified as having a cultural explanation, they are linked to behavior patterns emerging from beliefs and values that are transmitted through socialization (House 1981; MacLeod and Lively 2003). As a result, reducing the incidence of negative outcomes requires “fixing” the individual not changing the system (Lewis 1968). Despite Thoits’ (1989) early recognition that a social structure and personality approach to socialization would tend to highlight the influence of exogenous macrostructures, the scholarship on the negative outcomes of emotional labor, though quite diverse, does not usually demonstrate how the (capitalist) logic underlying organizational structures are primarily to blame for these effects. The problematic implications of sociologists’ failure to emphasize the structural factors influencing the performance of emotional labor are particularly evident when the perspective has been employed outside of sociology. Work within the organizational psychology and medical literatures are filled with descriptions of the need to recruit particular personality types for emotionally labor-intensive jobs or to enhance the individual “coping” strategies of emotional laborers who are at greatest risk for negative outcomes (Ducey, Gautney, and Wetzel 2003; Korczynski 2003; Lewis 2005; Sanders 2005; Schweingruber and Berns 2005; cf. Bullock and Waugh 2004). Is this what Hochschild (1983b) envisioned would result from drawing our attention to how feelings have been commodified? In sum, although the performance of emotion management has been consistently linked with holding relatively lower interactional status (Goodrum and Stafford 2003; Hochschild 1983b; Leidner 1993; Lively 2002; Pierce 1995; see also chapter 16 by Lively) and theorists have long argued that emotion management is an integral part of the process through which systems of stratification are reproduced (Clark 1990; Collins 1990), researchers have yet to systematically examine how aspects of both structure and culture may influence this process. The tendency for emotional labor researchers to focus on the types, distribution, and effects of emotional labor performance (Lively 2000) does not have to restrict their ability to move beyond linking these to the feeling rules governing the situation or the emotion norms to which they are held accountable. As sociologists of emotion continue to explore the individual emotion management strategies that emerge from cultural norms, they must also seek to understand

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how these strategies are linked to systems of stratification and how they are being used in the reproduction and change of these same systems (Hochschild 1979, 1983b, 1990; see MacLeod and Lively 2003 for a similar argument).

THE CASE FOR CONTEXT Many scholars have argued that everyday interaction helps reproduce social inequality; they identify this interactional link as culture. . . .“Emotion work” links everyday interaction and social structure. —Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003:773)

As suggested by Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003), studies of emotional labor have the potential to contribute to sociological understanding of social reproduction and change. To do so, however, requires a return to the original point of inquiry specified by Hochschild (1979:551) when she stated that an emotion-management perspective serves as “a lens to inspect self, interaction, and structure” (emphasis added). This process would be aided by shifting away from the idea that studies of emotional labor reflect a cultural approach and toward a conceptualization that emphasizes the contextual bases of emotion management processes and outcomes. This may seem to be a mere language game but, as suggested above, the implications of such linguistic choices should not be overlooked. A contextual approach to emotion management would include theoretical and methodological references to systems of social relations (i.e., structure) and systems of meaning (i.e., culture).4 What I am suggesting is similar to the approach advocated by Lawler and Thye’s (1999) use of the term “exchange context” as a linguistic tool that recognizes the simultaneous influence of emotion norms and power/status conditions.5 A contextual approach is consistent with House’s (1995) recommendations that narrower and more precise conceptions of structure and culture be used. As described above, a contextual approach would therefore be consistent with the work of social theorists who have sought to conceptualize culture as structured. This would include Giddens’ (1984) conceptualization of “rules and resources” and Sewell’s (1992)“schemas and resources.” 4

This definition of “social context” is taken from Hays’ (1994:65) reconceptualization of “social structure.” I use the more inclusive “context” to avoid conceptual confusion between the use of the terms “structure” and “social structure.” 5 Lawler and Thye (1999) initially state that the emotional culture surrounding the experience and management of emotion takes place within a context that also includes structural positions. However, they later revert to the common tendency to grant more scientific authority to structural-relational approaches by noting that, as opposed to the cultural-normative approaches that are “more conceptual and interpretive” (225), these approaches make “causal predictions for which emotions emerge given a set of structural conditions.” While I do not deny that this has been the case, what I am suggesting is that adopting a cultural approach should not be characterized as precluding a consideration of structural conditions or of making causal predictions.

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House (1995:390) notes that these are consistent with his narrower definitions of culture and structure and that “these are two separable components of any social system, that each may affect the others, and that one or the other may be more important as a cause or explanation of any observed individual behaviors or patterns of behavior among members of a social system.” Extending the argument proposed by Lawler and Thye (1999), a contextual approach to studying emotion management would examine the effect of normative expectations on the experience and management of emotion as well as the extent to which social positions impact the emotions people are likely to experience and manage. As these authors state, Collins’ (1975, 2004) order giver–order taker theory of stratification has stimulated exchange theorists to explore a number of different questions about the relationships among power, status, and emotional experience. I would suggest that this is no less possible for studies of emotion management. In this case, researchers would need to explore not only the relative effect of normative expectations and social positions on felt emotion but also on the extent to which these facets of social context may combine to influence the emotion management processes that result. This would suggest that Lawler and Thye’s (1999:223) statement that “structural-relational conditions are fundamental causes of emotions actually felt and emotion norms shape their expression or display” (see Collins 1975, 1990, 2004; Kemper 1978, 1991; Smith-Lovin 1995; Stets 2003; Thoits 1989; Turner and Stets 2005 for similar arguments) should not be viewed as a foundational assumption within the sociology of emotions but should be reframed as a question in need of empirical verification.

THE CURRENT STUDY The current study provides an initial examination of the issues discussed above. In contrast to most quantitative studies of emotional labor that focus on the mental health outcomes of emotional experience and management (Adelmann 1989; Bulan, Erickson, and Wharton 1997; Erickson and Ritter 2001; Pugliesi and Shook 1997; cf. Gibson 1997), I limit the analysis to examining the extent to which aspects of social context are associated with the experience of emotion and the performance of surface and deep acting. In exploring these relationships, I have organized the analysis in a way that is generally consistent with a social structural and personality framework (House 1981; MacLeod and Lively 2003). Given that the sample is limited to registered nurses working within one health care system, I have included social context variables that are most consistent with other empirical research on this population (Aiken et al. 2001; Atencio, Cohen, and Gorenberg 2003; Institute of Medicine 2004; Rambur et al. 2005; Smith 1992). In addition to operationalizing the cultural context in terms of feeling rules and values, I operationalize the structural context in terms of both individual positions in social hierarchies and dimensions of the more proximate occupational context. The latter includes a measure

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of work-identity discrepancy that, while not completely consistent with measures used by identity theorists (Burke 1991; Marcussen and Large 2003), supports the underlying logic that emotions tend to emerge from discrepancies between how people perceive themselves in a situation and their identity standards. The longstanding recognition by interactionist scholars that the production and reproduction of status systems involve identity processes (Burke and Hoelter 1988; White and Burke 1987) makes the inclusion of such variables essential for studies of emotion management processes as well (see Ashforth and Humphrey 1993 for a similar argument). A number of specific hypotheses could be listed that reflect previous research and theory on emotional experience and management. These might include: – Those holding higher status positions (men, whites, managers, those with more human capital) are likely to experience more positive emotions (Hochschild 1979; Thoits 1989). – Those holding higher status positions are less likely to manage their emotions (Erickson and Ritter 2001). – The more feeling rules are perceived to apply to situated interaction, the more emotion management will be performed (Grandey 2000; Morris and Feldman 1996). – The more job autonomy one has, the less emotion management will be performed (Morris and Feldman 1996). – The more intense the emotions experienced, the more likely emotion management will be performed (Erickson and Ritter 2001; Grandey 2000). Although each of these could be tested with the current data, for this chapter I am not as interested in these more detailed outcomes as I am with examining how the variables, as indicators of structure and culture, are related to felt emotion and emotion management processes. – To what extent are structure and culture related to emotional experiences? To surface and deep acting? – Is structure more strongly related to emotional experience than culture? Is culture more strongly related to emotion management than structure?

METHODS DATA AND SAMPLE

The data presented here are part of a larger study examining the effect of the emotional context of care on the retention of registered nurses working within acute care hospitals and were collected from registered nurses employed at two urban hospitals located in a midwestern city. The hospitals were owned and operated by a single health care system. A complete listing of nursing personnel was obtained from the health system’s human resources department, and a written

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questionnaire was distributed to all registered nurse employed within each hospital (n  1461). Eighty percent of nurses returned a completed questionnaire (n  1169). For this study, the experiences of both managers and direct care nurses were examined. Nine individuals were dropped from the analyses as a result of large amounts of missing data; for those missing one or two scale items, mean substitution was used. Of the 1158 registered nurses, 96% were female and 95% were white. In regard to education, 32.6% earned a diploma of nursing, 11.4% had an Associate’s degree, 49.1% had a Bachelor’s degree, and 6.9% had earned a graduate degree in nursing. Seventy-five percent of the respondents were married and sixty-five percent had children living at home. The mean age of respondents was 43 years old with an average of 17.4 years as a registered nurse. These demographics are consistent with national averages for gender and age. However, the current sample under-represents minority nurses, and over-represents those who are married with children. Although these statistics are representative of nurses employed by the health system studied, nurses holding bachelor’s degrees are overrepresented compared with hospitals nationally (Spratley 2000). The average nurse in this sample worked 34 hours per week with 65% working a day shift. Consistent with the hospitals’ employment records, 21% of the nurses in this sample were employed in medical-surgical units, 30% in critical care, 15.7% in operating or recovery units, 16.8% in maternity, and the remaining 17% in psychiatric, outpatient, or other units. Emotional Experiences and Emotional Labor The analyses focus on three types of emotional experiences (i.e., agitated, negative, and positive) and two general forms of emotional labor (i.e., surface and deep acting). Because the performance of emotional labor rests, in part, on the extent to which emotions are felt (Erickson and Ritter 2001), emotional experiences were included as independent variables in the models estimating the performance of emotional labor. The operationalization of emotional experiences builds on prior measurement strategies (Erickson and Ritter 2001) as well as information obtained in preliminary focus groups with registered nurses from both hospitals (n  96). Because the sample was limited to registered nurses, I could not assume that Russell’s (1989) or Plutchik’s (1962) models would necessarily capture the most frequent emotions experienced by nurses during work hours. As a result, these lists of emotion were modified based on information obtained from nurses about their own emotional experiences. The resulting list included the following 15 emotions: afraid, angry, anxious, ashamed, calm, excited, frustrated, guilty, happy, helpless, irritated, proud, relaxed, sad, and surprised. In the written questionnaire, respondents were asked to think about the last week at the hospital and to indicate how strongly or intensely they felt each of the identified emotions on an eight-point scale (0  Not at all; 1  Very Slightly; 4  Moderately; 7  Very Intensely). Factor analyses were then used to combine sets of emotions into

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similarly valenced groups (Erickson and Ritter 2001; Russell 1989). Three significant factors emerged from these analyses. The first factor, agitated emotions, included feelings of anger, frustration, and irritation (Cronbach’s alpha  0.89; eigenvalue  5.17). The second factor contained the positive emotions of calm, happy, excited, proud, and relaxed (Cronbach’s alpha  0.78; eigenvalue  2.37). The final factor included the negative emotions of afraid, ashamed, and guilty (Cronbach’s alpha  0.60; eigenvalue  1.13). The factors explained 34%, 16%, and 8% of the variance, respectively. Factor loadings ranged from 0.62 to 0.88 and no items loaded highly (0.40) on more than one factor. One of the contributions of this study is the examination of how social context may influence surface and deep acting differently. Surface acting, or “expressive emotion work” (Hochschild 1979:562) occurs when individuals alter their outward display of emotion in an effort to conform to feeling rules and as a means to potentially modify felt emotion (Hochschild 1983b). Deep acting takes place when a person directs her management efforts toward exhorting authentically felt emotion so that it is in line with applicable feeling rules. Each form of emotional labor requires a certain amount of effort and success is not guaranteed. In addition, while both forms occur as a result of emotional dissonance (i.e., when felt emotions are inconsistent with feeling rules), the amount and type of effort or “intervention” varies according to the specific form of emotional labor performed (Ashforth and Humphrey 1993; Grandey 2003; Hochschild 1983a,b). Hochschild (1983b:33) identified two basic surface acting strategies. The first, disguising what we feel or “suppression,” has been identified empirically as masking or covering up felt emotions that are at odds with the feeling rules governing the interaction (Erickson and Ritter 2001; Erickson and Wharton 1997; Hochschild 1979, 1983b; Lively 2000). The second, pretending to feel what we do not, is a more active process than masking in that the individual attempts to generate visible signs of expected feeling; a process that requires the creation or modification of emotional displays in addition to the masking of inappropriate feelings. Based on these conceptual differences, the first indicator of surface acting asked respondents to indicate on a five-point scale the frequency with which they covered up their true feelings at work with each set of role-related interactional partners: patients, patients’ families, physicians/residents, unit managers/directors, nursing co-workers, and non-RN staff (1  Never, 5  Everyday; adapted from Brotheridge and Lee 2003). These items were then summed to form an index with a range from 6 to 30 where higher scores indicate the extent to which respondents attempted to cover up their true feelings at work. For the second indicator of surface acting, respondents were asked to report the frequency with which they pretended to have feelings that were expected but that they did not really feel when interacting with members of each of the previously identified groups (1  Never; 5  Everyday; adapted from Brotheridge and Lee 2003). These items were also summed to form an index ranging from 6 to 30 where higher scored indicate more attempts to pretend to feel the expected emotions.

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Where surface acting identifies the effort of trying to appear to be experiencing the required emotion, deep acting requires that individuals work on their emotions in an attempt to authentically feel that which is expected (Hochschild 1983b). To measure deep acting, respondents were asked to indicate the frequency with which they make an effort to actually feel the emotions they are expected to display with each group (1  Never, 5  Everyday; adapted from Brotheridge and Lee 2003). As an index, responses ranged from 6 to 30 with higher scores indicating more frequent deep acting efforts. Social Context Facets of the work environment’s cultural context were measured in terms of the hospitals’ perceived emotion norms and the congruence or “fit” between what nurses perceive the organization to value and their personal values as health care professionals. Positive feeling rules do not measure what nurses actually do but rather the specific feeling rules governing their interactions with others on the job. To provide quality care, nurses (along with other health care professionals) are required to actively work toward the creation of positive interactional contexts and to neutralize negative ones (Boykin and Schoenhofer 2001; Mitchell and Grippando 1993). These emotion norms also reflect the need for nurses to engage in interpersonal emotion management (Thoits 1996) as well as self-management. For this study, positive feeling rules were measured by summing the responses to a question that asked: “To be effective in your job, to what extent are you required to:” (a) reassure patients who are distressed or upset; (b) express feelings of sympathy; and (c) express friendly emotions (Cronbach’s alpha  0.73; adapted from Best, Downey, and Jones 1997). Negative feeling rules included requirements that nurses (a) hide anger or disapproval about something someone has done; (b) remain calm even when they were astonished; (c) hide disgust over something someone has done; and (d) hide fear of someone who is threatening (alpha  0.85; adapted from Best, Downey, and Jones 1997). For both of these scales, higher scores indicate that nurses perceived that more of these requirements must be followed to do their job effectively. Maslach and Leiter (1997) identified value congruence as being one of the key domains of work life associated with the relationship between job stress and burnout. When organizational and personal values are congruent, successes are shared and positive outcomes are more likely. When there are differences between an organization’s values and the values of its staff, or if the organization does not practice its stated values, congruence is low and more negative outcomes tend to occur. In this study, value congruence was measured by summing responses to five items assessing the extent to which respondents agreed (1  Strongly Disagree; 4  Strongly Agree) with each of the following statements: (a) My values and the organization’s are alike; (b) Working here forces me to compromise my values; (c) The organization is committed to quality; (d) The organization’s goals influence my day-to-day work activities; and (e) my personal career goals are consistent with the organization’s stated values (alpha  0.75; Leiter and Maslach 2004).

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Consistent with a social structure and personality framework (MacLeod and Lively 2003), structural context was operationalized using “component” indicators of human capital (i.e., education, years of nursing experience), each respondent’s position within prominent social hierarchies (i.e., race, income, sex), and more “proximate” measures of job structure (e.g., managerial position, workload, autonomy). Education was measured by asking respondents to indicate the highest level of education they had achieved (1  School of Nursing Diploma, 2  Associate’s Degree, 3  Baccalaureate Degree, 4  Graduate Degree) and years as an RN reflected the length of time that the respondent had been a registered nurse. Sex was measured with female coded as 1. Race was dichotomized with European American/white coded as 1. Income was coded into 11 categories (1  $1 – $9999; 11  $100,000 or more). Managers were identified by asking respondents to indicate whether or not they held a management position (1  yes). The measures of workload and job autonomy were derived from Karasek’s (1979) job demands-control model using a four-point scale (1  Strongly Disagree, 4  Strongly Agree). The workload scale summed responses to five items asking about the extent to which nurses agreed that they: (a) had too much work to do everything well; (b) never seemed to have enough time to get everything done; (c) were not asked to do excessive amounts of work (reverse coded); (d) had enough time to get the job done (reverse coded); and (e) were free form conflicting demands in their job (reverse coded). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability for the workload scale was 0.82. Job autonomy was measured similarly for the following items: (a) I have the freedom to decide what I do on my job; (b) It is basically my own responsibility to decide how my job gets done; (c) My job requires that I be creative; (d) I have a lot of say about what happens on my job; and (e) I am given a lot of freedom to decide how I do my own work (alpha  0.75). The measure of work-identity discrepancy served as an indicator of person-environment fit (French, Caplan, and Harrison 1982) as well as evaluating the level of discrepancy between what nurses thought others expected them to be like on-the-job and how they actually perceived themselves to be.6 To assess the extent to which these identity-related meanings were discrepant, respondents were given a list of 12 paired adjectives and asked to identify which number along a seven-point continuum most accurately reflected their view of what other people generally expected nurses to be like. Respondents were then asked to indicate how they personally saw themselves as a nurse using the same adjective pairs. The adjective pairs included: Altruistic–Selfish, Calm–Agitated, Caring–Uncaring, Dependent–Autonomous, Empathetic–Unfeeling, Flexible–Inflexible, Immoral– Moral, Inept–Competent, Organized–Unorganized, Responsible–Irresponsible, Unknowledgeable–Knowledgeable, Unsure–Confident. The absolute value of the 6 This concept and its associated measure are similar to constructs presented in identity theory (Burke and Reitzes 1991; Burke and Tully 1977) and discrepancy theories (Higgins, Klein, and Strauman 1985; Marcussen and Large 2003). Despite such similarities, the measures are different enough to preclude a direct test of theoretical propositions drawn from these theories.

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difference between the expected obligation and the actual self-perception for each item was calculated and the results summed. Finally, two control variables were included that have been shown to influence nurse outcomes, number of hours worked and working in the nightshift (1  yes) (Aiken et al. 2001; Institute of Medicine 2004). Number of hours worked per week was measured by collapsing the hours listed into four groups reflecting the most common nursing shifts (1  1–24 hours; 2  25–36 hours; 3  36–40 hours; and 4  more than 40 hours). Table 15.1 presents the descriptive statistics for all variables as well as their bivariate correlations.

RESULTS The primary goal of these analyses was to examine the extent to which there is empirical justification for a more contextual approach to the experience and management of emotion. To this end, a few of the correlational results are worth noting before moving on to the results of regression analyses. As might be expected, proximate forms of culture and structure were more strongly correlated with the emotion variables than were the diffuse status characteristics and measures of human capital (see Table 15.1). Despite the disproportionate representation of women in nursing, being female is negatively correlated with income and holding a managerial position. Women were also more likely than men to perceive the existence of rules requiring the display of positive emotions and to engage in deep acting. Suggestive of the gendered characteristics of nursing, women reported lower levels of work-identity discrepancy than men. Finally, compared to nurses of color, white nurses were more likely to report experiencing positive emotions on the job and to pretend to have feelings that were expected but that they were not actually experiencing. Table 15.2 presents the results of regression analyses examining the relationships between social context and emotional experiences. These results show that structural positions along with proximate occupational characteristics influence the experience of emotion but do so differently depending on the experience under consideration. As indicated in the first column of Table 15.2, hours worked, having a higher workload, work-identity discrepancy, and negative feeling rules are associated with higher levels of agitation (i.e., anger, irritation, frustration) among nurses. In contrast, lower levels of agitation are related to more years of occupational experience, job autonomy, and value congruence. In the second column of Table 15.2, similar relationships are found between negative emotions (e.g., sadness, fear, guilt, shame) and years of experience, workload, discrepancy, and negative feeling rules. In addition, negative emotions are less likely to be reported among managers and those with more education. Finally, the results presented in the last column of Table 15.2 indicate that white nurses report experiencing more positive emotional experiences (e.g., happiness, pride, excitement) than do nurses of color. Higher workload levels, more work-identity

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Social Structure and Emotion Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlation Coefficients for all

TABLE 15.1 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1 Agitated emotions 2 Negative emotions

0.445**

3 Positive emotions

0.319**

0.217**

4 Cover up feelings

0.427**

0.290**

0.316**

5 Pretend to have feelings

0.401**

0.264**

0.262**

0.707**

6 Make effort to feel

0.095**

0.111**

0.001

0.201**

0.256**

7 Hours worked per week

0.111**

0.037

0.092**

0.035

0.077**

8 Nightshift

0.000

0.037

0.049

0.036

0.025

9 Female

0.008

0.001

0.011

0.002

0.003

0.003

0.026

10 White 11 Income

0.074*

12 Education

0.057

0.063*

0.029

0.065*

0.029 0.011 0.059* 0.037

0.149** 0.097**

0.025

0.020

0.029

0.026

0.034

0.002

0.034

0.007

0.561**

0.027

0.026

0.031

0.032

0.016

0.070*

0.026 0.049

0.103**

0.026

0.019

0.038

0.072*

0.280**

13 Years as an RN

0.130**

0.117**

14 Positive feeling rules

0.170**

0.129**

0.002

0.265**

0.208**

0.164** 0.073*

0.038

15 Negative feeling rules

0.287**

0.235**

0.151**

0.416**

0.385**

0.200**

0.027

16 Value congruence

0.340**

0.187**

0.339**

0.259**

0.282**

17 Manager

0.015

0.041

0.091**

0.024

0.039

0.016

0.015

0.098**

0.132**

0.040

0.390**

0.088**

0.118**

0.112**

0.082**

0.113**

0.085**

0.483**

0.349**

0.320**

0.337**

0.282**

0.225**

0.107**

0.260**

0.221**

0.219**

0.034

0.252**

0.260**

0.238**

0.184**

0.194**

0.037

M

8.91

1.55

18.08

17.44

14.75

17.91

2.20

0.21

SD

5.60

2.64

6.60

4.65

5.28

6.77

1.01

0.41

18 Workload 19 Job Autonomy 20 Work identity discrepancy

0.005

0.060*

p  0.05.

*

p  0.01.

**

discrepancy, and negative feeling rules were all associated with lower levels of positive emotion while job autonomy, positive feeling rules, and value congruence were related to higher levels of these feelings. Although the operationalization of identity meanings is not identical to that used by identity theorists, the results regarding work-identity discrepancy support the underlying logic of the theory. In addition, the results showing strong relationships between identity discrepancy and each set of emotional experiences suggest that identity theorists should continue to think about ways of examining the relationships between identity and emotion. To what extent are structure and culture related to emotional experiences? As the results in Table 15.2 indicate, components of both structure and culture

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Reconsidering culture, structure, and emotional labor Variables (n  1158) 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

0.015 0.114** 0.055 0.041

0.039

0.081**

0.119**

0.056

0.090** 280**

0.098**

0.030

0.002

0.039

0.022

0.024

0.002 0.005

0.061* 0.051

0.025

0.028

0.021

0.065*

0.017

0.297** 0.118**

0.010

0.016

0.098** 0.012

0.005

0.018

0.106** 0.003

0.070*

0.001 0.033

0.011

0.630**

0.178** 0.038 0.163**

0.194**

0.020

0.034

0.169**

0.290**

0.220**

0.098** 0.093** 0.152**

0.267**

0.002

0.067* 0.161**

0.061*

0.089**

0.183**

0.151**

0.124** 0.229** 0.151** 0.050

0.139**

0.122**

0.96

0.95

5.35

2.30

17.36

16.43

9.52

14.15

.10

13.16

12.87

7.42

0.19

0.22

1.48

1.00

10.46

2.53

2.74

2.29

.30

2.70

2.42

4.61

contribute to explaining the variance in emotional experiences. While the influence of structure might have been expected (Kemper 1991; Lawler and Thye 1999), the findings reported here suggest that feeling rules and values also play a significant role in understanding felt emotion. The differential influence of positive and negative feeling rules is particularly interesting in this regard. These results suggest that rules governing the experience and display of positive emotional states may actually help to increase positive emotional outcomes. While merely suggestive, the results suggest that it is the requirement to suppress negative feelings (not exhort positive ones) that are problematic for well-being. The findings concerning the indicators of structural position and human capital are also interesting given the degree to which their effects vary across the different emotions.

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TABLE 15.2 Regression of Emotional Experiences on Structural Context, Cultural Context, Emotional Experience, and Controls Agitated emotions

Negative emotions

b



Controls Hours worked Nightshift

0.636 0.273

0.114*** 0.020

Structural context Structural position/ human capital Female White Income Education Years as an RN

0.887 0.093 0.030 0.126 0.036

0.031 0.004 0.008 0.023 0.067**

0.216 0.379 0.019 0.166 0.021

0.761 0.754 0.195 0.172

0.041 0.364*** 0.084*** 0.142***

Job structure Manager Workload Job autonomy Work-identity discrepancy Cultural context Positive feeling rules Negative feeling rules Value congruence Constant R2 Adjusted R2



b

0.101 0.128



b

0.675 0.021

0.103** 0.001

0.016 0.031 0.011 0.063* 0.083**

1.073 2.080 0.131 0.244 0.026

0.032 0.068** 0.029 0.037 0.041

0.517 0.273 0.011 0.110

0.059* 0.280*** 0.010 0.192***

0.055 0.584 0.371 0.223

0.003 0.239*** 0.136*** 0.156***

0.017

0.017

0.355

0.136***

0.048

0.022

0.212

0.104***

0.134

0.468

0.191***

0.058

2.175 0.35 0.34

Positive emotions

 2.573 0.20 0.19

0.039 0.020

0.139*** 0.050

0.229 0.574

0.095** 0.199***

8.135 0.25 0.24

n  1158. p  0.05. ** p  0.01. *** p  0.001. *

Is structure more strongly related to experience than culture? Yes. Although both structure and culture influence the experience of agitated, negative, and positive emotions, the structural variables were more strongly related to these emotional experiences than were the indicators of culture. For nurses, workload consistently had the strongest relationship to these emotional outcomes. Moreover, when the indicators of job structure were removed from the model (not shown), the variance explained dropped 43% (from 0.35 to 0.20) for agitation, 55% (from 0.20 to 0.09) for negative emotions, and 44% (from 0.25 to 0.14) for positive emotions. In

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comparison, when the cultural indicators were removed, the variance explained dropped only by 11%, 5%, and 20%, respectively. Finally, work-identity discrepancy was significantly related, in the expected directions, to all emotional experiences. This result is significant in that it suggests the important role that work-related identity processes may play in understanding the well-being of employees. Table 15.3 presents regression results for models predicting the performance of surface and deep acting. The findings suggest the importance of distinguishing between these two forms of emotional labor as well as the relative influence of structure and culture. Looking at the effect of emotional experiences across the forms of emotional labor, the results indicate that the intensity of emotional experience demonstrates a relatively strong influence on the performance of surface acting but not deep acting. The difference in the amount of variance explained across the two forms of emotional labor further suggest that we know relatively little about what influences the tendency to engage in deep acting. Although most of the results for deep acting barely reach the p  0.10 threshold, they raise a number of interesting possibilities. First, note that women are more likely to engage in deep acting than men. This finding is consistent with the fact that nursing is a highly gendered occupation and Hochschild’s (1983b:167) suggestion that deep acting processes may be more closely associated with women’s ways of performing emotion work than men’s. Also noted in column 3 of Table 15.3, years of experience is associated with less deep acting while workload is associated with more. It may be that more experienced nurses find little need to engage in emotional labor of any kind and that a higher workload requires a range of emotion management techniques. (If this latter is truly the case, however, it is somewhat surprising that no such effect is found between workload and pretending to have feelings.) Finally, as with the other forms of emotional labor, the perception that negative feeling rules are expected to govern workplace interactions is positively associated with the performance of deep acting. In the first column of Table 15.3, the results indicate that workload, negative feeling rules, and the experience of agitated and negative emotions are positively related to covering up or masking one’s feelings on the job. As might be expected, job autonomy, value congruence, and the experience of positive emotion tend to be associated with fewer attempts to cover up one’s feelings. The results in column two indicate that the two forms of surface acting reflect somewhat different management processes. First, white nurses are more likely than nurses of color to pretend to feel emotions that they are not actually experiencing. Experiencing greater work-identity discrepancy is also significantly associated with pretending to feel. Other results are somewhat similar to those for covering up. Job autonomy is associated with less pretending as is value congruence and positive emotional experiences. In contrast, negative feeling rules and experiencing agitated and, marginally, negative emotions are related to nurses being more likely to pretend to having feelings they do not actually experience. To what extent are structure and culture related to surface and deep acting? As the results in Table 15.3 suggest, components of both structure and culture

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TABLE 15.3 Regression of Surface and Deep Acting on Structural Context, Cultural Context, Emotional Experience, and Controls Surface acting Cover up feelings

Deep acting

Pretend to have feelings

Make an effort to feel

b



b



b



Controls Hours worked Nightshift

0.223 0.560

0.048 0.049

0.463 0.485

0.088** 0.037

0.183 0.298

0.027 0.018

Structural context Structural position/ human capital Female White Income Education Years as an RN

0.475 0.540 0.136 0.144 0.014

0.020 0.025 0.043 0.031 0.031

0.287 1.458 0.047 0.154 0.021

0.011 0.060* 0.013 0.029 0.041

1.941 1.383 0.154 0.267 0.038

0.056† 0.044 0.034 0.039 0.059†

0.112 0.100 0.127 0.040

0.007 0.058* 0.066** 0.040

0.593 0.028 0.170 0.079

0.034 0.014 0.078** 0.069**

0.867 0.151 0.041 0.017

0.038 0.060† 0.014 0.012

0.055

0.012

0.006

Job structure Manager Workload Job autonomy Work-identity discrepancy

Cultural context Positive feeling 0.102 rules Negative feeling 0.421 rules Value congruence 0.114 Emotional experience Agitated emotions 0.171 Negative emotions 0.102 Positive emotions 0.103 Constant R2 Adjusted R2

13.968 0.33 0.32

0.248***

0.136

0.051

0.514

0.266***

0.356

0.144***

0.056*

0.240

0.104***

0.066

0.022

0.206*** 0.058* 0.146***

0.186 0.096  0.069

0.197*** 0.048†  0.086**

0.009 0.132 0.061

0.008 0.051 0.059†

12.417 0.29 0.28

9.504 0.06 0.05

n  1158. †  0.10. * p  0.05. ** p  0.01. *** p  0.001.

contribute to explaining the variance in emotional labor. Here, the influence of culture would have been anticipated (Smith-Lovin 1995; Thoits 1989). However, the findings indicate that aspects of structure also influence the performance of each type of emotional labor, though less consistently than in the models predicting

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emotional experience. Clearly, feeling rules are not the only factor influencing the performance of emotional labor but proximate structures appear to have more influence on the performance of surface acting than deep acting. Given the small number of minority and male nurses, the results showing that nurses of color tend to “pretend” less frequently than white nurses and female nurses perform more deep acting than male nurses are particularly interesting. Though merely suggestive, these results raise new questions about the extent to which the different forms of emotional labor operate differently across race and gender. These results indicate the importance of examining the structural conditions that may influence the tendency to rely on specific forms of management strategies, the effectiveness of such strategies, and the extent to which these differences may influence well-being. Is culture more strongly related to emotion management than structure? Yes. Although both structure and culture influence the performance of emotional labor, the cultural variables were more strongly related to these performances than were the indicators of structure. For nurses, negative feeling rules were most strongly associated with the performance of each form of emotional labor. When the indicators of the cultural context were removed from the models (not shown), the variance explained dropped 24% (from 0.33 to 0.25) for covering up feelings, 24% (from 0.29 to 0.22) for pretending, and 50% (from 0.06 to 0.03) for deep acting. In comparison, when the job structure variables were removed, the variance explained dropped only by 0.01 for each of the models tested (i.e., 3%, 3%, and 17%, respectively). It should be noted that the intensity of emotional experiences were also significantly related to the performance of emotional labor, particularly in regard to surface acting. Thus, it is likely that the proximate indicators of job structure are influencing emotional labor performance indirectly through their effect on emotional experience.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The findings reported for the performance of emotional labor indicate that Hochschild (1979) was right to conceptualize the emotion work process as related to feeling rules and structure. Unfortunately, the tendency for many writers who followed to apply a cultural label to Hochschild’s approach has contributed to the relative neglect of structural influences and an overemphasis on the role of feeling rules. Explicitly recognizing the role of structure and culture in further theoretical and empirical work on emotion management process would not only represent a more accurate legacy for Hochschild’s work but would help to clarify the importance of emotional processes for understanding social reproduction and change. The results for emotional labor also lend support to the utility of conceptualizing the causal significance of culture not in terms of ultimate values but more in keeping with Swidler’s (1986) image of culture as a “tool kit” which people may use in varying configurations to solve different types of problems. These tools are used to construct patterned “strategies of action” that differ across both time

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and structural position. Taking this approach, culture is not viewed as a unified system that pushes action in one consistent direction. Instead, actors are seen as using features of culture in an active, skilled manner. Based on the findings presented here, the extent to which surface and deep acting are perceived to be tools that are useful are, in turn, structured by race and gender positions as well as by the amount of work-identity discrepancy and the autonomy one has in choosing a course of action. Such an approach would also be consistent with the more traditional use of culture to explain why different groups may behave differently in the same structural situation. Despite frequent mention of the potential for variation in the emotional experiences and management across race, class, and gender (Hochschild 1990), few researchers have moved beyond examinations of gender variation (Mirchandani 2003; cf. Simon and Nath 2004). As Hochschild notes, based on variations in one’s structural location, particular ideologies and feeling rules emerge influencing the development of preferred strategies of action. Here, the question becomes: To what extent do individuals alter their emotional strategies (including strategies related to emotion management) to fit potentially different emotional subcultures related to their positions within the stratification system? Assuming that we view individuals as self-motivated (or agentive), we can conceive these strategies as “active strategic stances” toward stratification systems in which they may be disadvantaged and empirically investigate the emotion management processes that may emerge from each stance. This would be consistent with Cahill’s (1998) view that diffuse status characteristics such as gender or race are likely to influence behaviors related to the more circumscribed, or proximate, statuses found within organizational arenas. In the future, emotion management researchers need to more fully explore the extent to which emotional cultures, experiences, and management processes that may be linked to organizational or professional settings generalize across the diffuse characteristics that sociologists commonly associate with more macro-level inequalities. For example, Thoits (1985, 1990) recognized that status inconsistencies such as being a “male nurse” might lead to discrepant emotional experiences. Given the history of racialization within the nursing profession (Glenn 1992), being a nurse of color might also represent a form of multiple role occupancy and/or subcultural marginality that may be associated with reports of emotional deviance (Thoits 1990). Although the results reported here do not provide direct support for the idea that those with these multiple statuses are more likely to experience emotional deviance, they do suggest that the feeling rules underlying the profession of nursing may not apply consistently across social structural categories. The findings that male nurses were less likely to perform deep acting and that nurses of color were less likely to perform surface acting that required them to pretend to have emotions they did not feel provide indications that diffuse structural characteristics influence the emotional labor process in a way that may (or may not) be unique to the profession of nursing. In addition to raising questions about the theoretical and empirical adequacy of examining the effects

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of feeling rules as if they operated outside of the influence of structure, these results have implications for how studies of emotional labor may facilitate new insights into agency and social change. Since Hochschild’s initial empirical examination of the effects of emotional labor on employee well-being, researchers have sought to specify the conditions that explain, exacerbate, or buffer such effects (Bulan, Erickson, and Wharton 1997; Erickson and Ritter 2001; Lively 2002; Pugliesi and Shook 1997; Wharton 1993). This research tradition has shown that while emotional labor may not have negative effects on well-being at all times, it tends to be problematic for worker health. At the same time, experiencing emotions that are at odds with specified feeling rules tend to lead to emotion work that will bring feeling back in line with social expectations (Thoits 1985). The results of the current study indicate that those who should be experiencing greater emotional discrepancies (i.e., those with status inconsistencies) are not necessarily engaging in all forms of emotion management available to them. The crucial question thus becomes: How does this lack of emotional labor performance affect the health of these nurses? If males and people of color do not hold themselves accountable to the same occupational emotion norms as white, female nurses, might status inconsistency actually have health benefits? While clearly preliminary, these results do lend support to Mirchandani’s (2003) suggestion that studies of emotional labor have masked important forms of racialized emotion work. Mirchandani’s insights draw attention to the fact that theorists of emotion management have often recognized the gendered expectations in women’s jobs that assume the natural possession of caring skills. Neglected in most of these studies, however, have been the race and class assumptions underlying the privileging of gender. While emotion management scholars may continue to view emotion work as basically an act of “doing gender” in a particular way, the results reported here suggest that we must not lose sight of the fact that these structured expectations are carried through actors whose emotional cultures modify these gendered expectations in subtle and complex ways. By not performing surface and deep acting in the ways that are consistent with how white, female nurses do it, the experiences of minority and male nurses may provide unique insights into how to resist some of the more oppressive and debilitating dimensions of the commodification of care. In adopting a contextual approach that explicitly models how minority positions within institutional systems may provide insight into difference, resistance, and change, emotion management researchers may be able to contribute to more general theoretical attempts to elucidate the enabling or empowering features of social structure (Giddens 1984; Hays 1994). In sum, I suggest that emotions scholars should seriously consider the theoretical and empirical utility of differentiating between “structural” and “cultural” approaches. In particular, I hope that the information provided here has raised questions about the adequacy and implications of applying the cultural label to the approach inspired by Hochschild’s (1979, 1983b) original work. By reconsidering how structure and culture are theorized and studied, scholars of emotional labor are well-positioned to develop a contextual approach that does not

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implicitly assume that persons who occupy similar structural positions share common experiences. In so doing, their work will further sociological understanding of the microexperiences of macrostructures and the emotional bases of social reproduction and change.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was supported by a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (1 D1D HP 00004-010).

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