Emotional labor

Overview

Emotional labor is a concept proposed by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild. It refers to managing your own feelings on the job and giving the people you deal with the right emotional response. Typical examples are a shop worker keeping up a smile, a counselor staying calm, and a nurse staying close to a patient's feelings. On social media, there is also a view that posting or answering while managing your own feelings to meet your followers' expectations is a form of unpaid emotional labor.

Answering a question box is emotional labor

Answering in a question box is emotional labor. Empathy and encouragement for someone asking for advice, a calm response to harassment, humor for a funny question, seriousness for a serious one. You choose the right emotional response for each question and answer while managing how you really feel.

This emotional labor is unpaid. Question box owners get no money for the effort of supporting followers through their worries, putting up with harassment, and thinking up fun answers. There are "social rewards" such as likes and new followers, but they don't necessarily make up for the emotional drain.

Emotional labor builds up and leads to burnout

Emotional labor builds up. Answering one request for advice with care may not be a burden, but if you keep answering 10 of them every day, your emotional energy wears down. In particular, writing answers that support followers through their worries while you yourself are going through a hard time is a double load of emotional labor.

This buildup of emotional labor can sometimes play a part in question fatigue and burnout.

Ways to reduce emotional labor

An important way to reduce emotional labor is to give yourself permission not to respond perfectly every time. You don't have to empathize deeply with every request for advice. Answer light questions lightly, and answer heavy ones only when you have room to. Decide for yourself how to spend your emotional energy.

Keeping answer templates on hand also works. If you prepare some standard answers for common types of questions, you no longer have to pour your feelings into every answer from scratch. A question box is a tool for having fun, not a place where your feelings get squeezed dry.