Smile! (But Only if You Mean It)

Source: Freepik

Recall for a moment the last time you interacted with your boss. How did this conversation feel to you? Chances are that you experienced a sense of mental and emotional toil from controlling what you were saying and maybe more importantly, what you weren’t saying. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the term ‘emotional labor’ to describe the behavior of portraying or suppressing certain emotions in order to fulfill the emotional requirements of one’s profession.¹ Think of the restaurant server who puts on a smile when taking a customer’s order even though she is racked with chronic pain. Or the teacher who resists the urge to throw his hands up and let out an expletive the fifth time his unruly classroom fails to listen to him. You yourself may be in a profession where you are habitually required to express certain emotions with customers, co-workers, and supervisors alike regardless of how you actually feel.

Hochschild identified two types of emotional labor: surface acting and deep acting. In surface acting, you fake an outward emotion even though it does not align with how you are feeling internally. In deep acting, you effortfully modify how you are feeling on the inside to align with your outward emotional expression, resulting in a more authentic display of emotion. What are the long-term consequences of engaging in surface versus deep acting at work?

A 2019 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology looking at individuals in professions that deal with the public such as food servers, nurses, and teachers found a link between regular surface acting and heavier drinking after work.² This finding is consistent with research showing that surface acting is related to increased stress, more emotional exhaustion, and a higher likelihood of burnout.³ The smiling related to surface acting may even hurt our chances of being hired for certain jobs. A study published in 2015 in the Journal of Social Psychology examined the effect of smiling on applicants’ hireability for a newspaper reporting job. Smiling was negatively related to hiring in a job that is more associated with serious demeanor, showing that job type can be an important moderating factor on the impact of smiling on perceived interview performance.⁴ On the other hand, deep acting has been associated with better emotional performance and customer satisfaction.⁵

Deep acting involves acting or behaving from a place of authenticity, genuineness, and positive regard for the other — hallmarks of a person-centered approach. This is a mindset in which you believe your behavior and interactions have meaning and purpose. You feel concern and empathy for the person in front of you. You are aligned internally and externally and a smile may even arise naturally, though more from a moment of true engagement or connection with another person than from a sense of obligation.

Conventional wisdom might suggest we should smile (“…you’ll feel better”). Indeed, there is evidence that smiling can have small but variable effects on our emotional experience.⁶ But we need to weigh these potential benefits with the potential costs of emotional labor: stress, burnout, dissatisfaction, diminished job performance, binge drinking. We may not think about this type of emotional work as actual “work” but it drains us of precious energy just the same. So the next time you go to work, think before you smile.