At the Heart of Policing: Emotional labor among police officers
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: During my work as a police officer, I encountered many emotional demanding situations in which my \ncolleagues and I often seemed to act unfelt emotions or suppressed emotions that would better not \nbe displayed at that particular moment. For instance, during my first weeks of duty I wondered how \npolice officers could stay seemingly untouched while being confronted with drunk and offensive people. \nOne colleague once told me: “I don’t take it personally, it’s part of the job and so it doesn’t frustrate me \nanymore”. At other times, it turned out to be proper to display empathy although this emotion was not \nalways genuinely felt (anymore). In contrast, when interrogating a criminal I learned that sometimes \nacting friendly may help to acquire important information. Otherwise, unfelt emotions such as anger \nhad to be displayed in order to correct an offender and to prevent an interaction from escalating. \nThese anecdotes illustrate the benefits of acting emotions during the work of police officers. \nMoreover, emotions form an inherent part of people’s (work) lives on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, \nthe management and display of emotions in the workplace receives considerable attention as they \nmay influence both individual well-being and organizational outcomes. The term emotional labor \nwas first introduced by Hochschild (1983) and refers to how employees regulate their emotions \nas part of the work role and the consequences of doing so. The types of emotions that a company \nconsiders appropriate to show to clients are often part of its policy and are part of the company’s socalled \ndisplay rules (Ekman, 1973; Grandey, 2000). To adhere to these display rules, employees may \nengage in emotional labor by suppressing felt emotions or displaying emotions that are different \nfrom their genuinely experienced emotions (Hochschild, 1983). This emotion regulation technique, \ntermed surface acting, may lead to emotional dissonance, which refers to a state of discrepancy \nbetween felt and displayed emotions. Accumulating evidence from the past three decades reveals \nthat both surface acting and emotional dissonance are detrimental to employee well-being (cf. \nAshfort & Humphrey, 1993; Mesmer-Magnus, DeChurch, & Wax, 2012; Zapf, 2002).
Author: Benjamin R. van Gelderen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1633463306