Mental health

Are You Surface Acting At Work?

An interview with Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh, associate professor of psychology at Assumption College about how surface acting affects employees.

Open Source as Emotional Labor

NPM maintainer Forrest Norvell gives a presentation on the challenges of emotional labor for open source maintainers.

Why Women Are Tired: The Price of Unpaid Emotional Labor

A psychotherapist recounts stories of emotional exhaustion and its social causes.

What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer

A personal article about the emotional labor involved in managing open source projects.

Recognizing the Role of Emotional Labor in the On-Demand Economy

On-demand workers end up performing outsize amounts of what sociologists call “emotional labor,” or expressive work to make the customer experience a positive one so that users come back to the platform. This work extends beyond good customer service: It involves actively reshaping a worker’s inner emotional life to conform to employers’ and customers’ expectations of emotional performance.

The Evolution of Emotional Displays in Open Source Software Development Teams: An Individual Growth Curve Analysis

An academic study of emotion in OSS groups.

(PDF) The Evolution of Emotional Displays in Open Source Software Development Teams: An Individual Growth Curve Analysis. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324831951/download

Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor

A counter to many recent articles that tries to recenter the conversation about emotional labor onto issues of patriarchy.

Emotional Labor of Software Engineers

The concept of emotional labor, introduced by Hochschild in 1983, refers to the “process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines”. For instance, judges are expected to appear impartial, nurses—compassionate and police officers—authoritative.

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