Resources

Academic study of the stresses created by "surface acting" or the performance of emotions that do not reflect ones true feelings, by Dr. Alicia A. Grandey, Penn State University.

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

Academic study of the question: How is credit for group work allocated when individual contributions are not perfectly observed?

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

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

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

Funded report about the challenges facing open source software and sustainability when free labor is exploited by businesses that do not contribute.

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.

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

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

Seminal article from the now-defunct The Toast on how emotional labor is and expected and unpaid aspect of women's roles.

As a bro-y yet sensitive guy who cares about gender equality, I’ve always been apprehensive about entering the fray on gender issues. But in a #MeToo world, choosing to stay in my lane to avoid being criticized just doesn’t feel like an option. Deep inside, I knew this was a conversation that I needed to be a part of. And so began the laborious act of understanding emotional labor—and now I’m convinced that this is a conversation everyone needs to be a part of.

Academic report about gender and racial bias in STEM fields. Intersectional study of barriers in STEM fields.

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.

This Github repo includes materials and guidelines for running a brainstorming exercise that helps people develop ideas for tech talks. (The mechanism could be used for talks on any subject by adjusting the initial set of questions.) Slides from the initial presentation of the exercise are included in the repo. There are no speaker notes, but it should be pretty clear how to do it on your own.

A resource for finding women speakers and moderators for your event.

This article describes ways you can add inclusive behavior to employee evaluations.

A well-written slate of alternate values for developers that don't reinforce current systems of oppression as "meritocracy" so often does. Readers are invited to sign on to the statement.