Emotional labour: what it is, how it wears you down and what helps

Emotional labour is work in which you must show the expressions and tone your workplace requires, whatever you actually feel. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild first described it in the early 1980s (Grandey & Melloy, 2017) as the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display, sold for a wage and so with exchange value (Hochschild, 1983, as quoted in Andersen et al., 2025). Workplace standards such as “smile at customers” or “never show anger” are called display rules (Ma et al., 2023). Korea’s labour ministry guideline likewise defines emotional labour as having to show customers the emotions and expressions the workplace requires, whether you feel good, sad or angry (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019).

Sales staff and flight attendants are the classic examples, but Korea’s labour ministry wrote separate customer-service manuals for 11 jobs: nurses, kindergarten teachers, social workers, bus drivers, hotel staff, supermarket cashiers, cabin crew, call centre agents, telemarketers, insurance planners and golf caddies (Ministry of Employment and Labor, 2020). A 2019 estimate put customer-facing workers in Korea at about 7.03 million, 35.1% of all wage workers (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019).

It is not a diagnosis. The World Health Organization’s diagnostic guidance for mental disorders (ICD-11) has no entry for emotional labour (WHO, 2024), and even burnout is classed as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition (WHO, 2019). What Koreans call the “emotional labourer protection act” is a popular name for the amendment to the Occupational Safety and Health Act that took effect in October 2018 (National Institute of Korean Language, n.d.). In Japanese the term is 感情労働 (kanjō rōdō), and harassment by customers is shortened to kasuhara; in French it is called travail émotionnel, as in the title of the French edition of Hochschild’s book (Hochschild, 2017), and the occupational-health body INRS calls the demand to hide or fake feelings exigences émotionnelles, emotional demands (INRS, 2021).

mind.io does not offer an emotional-labour test, and this guide is not a diagnosis. It sets out, from research and official sources, how the strain differs with the way feelings are managed, what abuse from customers leaves behind, what workplaces must do (including Article 41 of Korea’s Occupational Safety and Health Act), the government’s steps for dealing with an abusive customer, and what helps you recover. Managing emotions happens in private life as well as at work (Ma et al., 2023), and the term is sometimes used for relationships and home life, but this guide is about paid work, especially work with customers.

There are two broad ways of matching your feelings to the job. Surface acting means changing your outward expressions and tone without altering what you feel inside; deep acting means trying to change your inner feelings so that you actually feel the required emotion (An et al., 2026). The psychologist Alicia Grandey proposed a model that sees emotional labour as these emotion regulation strategies (Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Melloy, 2017).

In a meta-analysis of 95 studies, surface acting and emotion-rule dissonance, the gap between what you feel and what you must show, were correlated with indicators of impaired well-being such as exhaustion at ρ = .39 to .48, and with job attitudes at ρ = −.24 to −.40. Deep acting had weak links with impaired well-being and positive links with emotional performance and customer satisfaction (ρ = .18 and .37; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). A meta-analysis of 109 studies (36,619 people) likewise found harmful consequences for health, attitudes and performance only when felt and shown emotions diverged (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012), and an analysis of 116 studies placed surface acting alongside lower job satisfaction and higher exhaustion (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013).

In a 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies, surface acting correlated with depression at r = .333 and with anxiety at r = .278, while deep acting had no significant link with negative mental health outcomes (r = .047). Results varied widely between studies, though, so the evidence is still limited (Zhao et al., 2025). Most studies look at a single point in time, but in a two-wave study of 151 trainee teachers, surface acting led to increases in later strain, with no effect in the opposite direction (Hülsheger et al., 2010).

That does not make deep acting the answer. In a study with three surveys a day for a week, deep acting was not related, directly or indirectly, to emotional exhaustion (Huppertz et al., 2020). What the research points to is the gap between what people feel and what they must show, and the idea that “smiling anyway makes it better” does not fit the evidence. That is why protection by the workplace comes before personal attitude.

Rude or abusive customers are a heavy load in themselves. In a meta-analysis of 119 studies (47,964 people), mistreatment by customers was linked with employees’ negative emotions, lower job satisfaction and more surface acting (Wu et al., 2023), and a meta-analysis of 72 studies (20,701 people) also linked it with emotional exhaustion and intentions to quit (Arvan et al., 2019). For most health outcomes, aggression from outsiders such as customers did not differ much from aggression by supervisors or co-workers (Hershcovis & Barling, 2010).

Studies of the Korean Working Conditions Survey point the same way. In an analysis of 23,128 workers from the 2017 survey, those who said they “always” dealt with angry customers, compared with those who “rarely” did, had odds of difficulty falling asleep 4.43 times higher for men and 3.75 times higher for women, and odds of depression 1.52 times higher for men and 2.86 times higher for women (Kang et al., 2019). Sales and service workers who dealt with angry clients more often had a higher risk of depression and anxiety. Unexpectedly, among those with support from managers, the link between abuse from clients and depression was stronger, not weaker; the researchers suggested that in a hierarchical workplace culture, a manager’s support may feel like another source of stress (Park & Kim, 2021). Experiences of workplace violence, such as verbal abuse or assault, had a bigger health impact than emotional labour itself (Hwang et al., 2020; Kim, 2025). All of these looked at a single point in time.

Some surveys show how common it is. In a 2015 survey by Korea’s National Human Rights Commission, 39% of 3,470 department store, duty-free and discount store sales staff said a customer had verbally abused them in the past year; about half were union members from one trade, so it is not a representative sample (National Human Rights Commission of Korea, 2016). In an online survey by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 10.8% of 8,000 workers said they had experienced serious nuisance behaviour from customers in the past three years (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2024).

It helps to tell it apart from look-alikes. If exhaustion has lasted a long time, see Burnout symptoms and the burnout check; that check measures personal and work-related exhaustion, not emotional labour. Compassion fatigue is a response to continuous exposure to other people’s suffering in jobs such as nursing and care (Manzanedo-Moreno et al., 2025), so its focus differs from the strain of faking feelings; it is covered in Empathy skills. If your mood has been low for more than two weeks, see Depression: what helps; if you have swallowed resentment and anger for a long time, see Hwabyung; and after a shocking event such as an assault, see Trauma and PTSD: what helps.

In Korea, since 18 October 2018 the Occupational Safety and Health Act has required employers to protect workers from abuse by customers (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019). Under what is now Article 41, employers must take preventive measures so that customer-facing workers, who deal with customers in person or by phone or online, are not harmed by verbal abuse, assault or other behaviour that causes physical or mental suffering beyond what is reasonable (Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41). The measures include a notice or voice message asking customers not to be abusive, a customer-service manual that covers how to handle problem situations, and training on that manual and on preventing harm to health (Enforcement Rule of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41).

Since October 2021, protection has covered every worker whose health is harmed, or at serious risk of harm, from abuse by customers or other third parties. The employer must then take the necessary measures among these: temporarily stopping or changing the work, extending breaks, supporting treatment and counselling, and helping with criminal complaints or claims for damages (Enforcement Decree of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41). Workers may ask for these measures; dismissing or disadvantaging a worker for asking can bring up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won, and failing to take the measures can bring an administrative fine of up to 10 million won (Occupational Safety and Health Act, Articles 41, 170 and 175). An illness caused by work-related mental stress from customer abuse can be recognised as an occupational disease (Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, Article 37).

What matters is whether the measures are actually used. In a one-time survey of 465 emotional labourers, rest support was directly linked with lower emotional exhaustion and support for dealing with customers was linked with it indirectly, through less surface acting and customer incivility, while training and health programmes had no effect (Yang, 2022). Workers in social welfare workplaces without an emotional labour manual were 1.49 times as likely to experience job stress as those with one (Ma et al., 2025). In a survey of 1,336 Danish human-service employees, supervision, discussing difficult cases together, prompt feedback, chances to vent to colleagues or managers, and task rotation were linked with lower burnout, and trust between staff and managers and a strong sense of psychological safety were crucial (Andersen et al., 2025).

Japan amended its labour policy act in 2025 so that, since 1 October 2026, all employers must take employment-management measures to prevent customer harassment: words or actions by customers that go beyond what is socially acceptable and harm the working environment, including by phone or on social media (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2025). Tokyo’s ordinance took effect on 1 April 2025 but has no penalties and asks businesses to make efforts (Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2024). Since September 2023, serious nuisance behaviour by customers has also been part of Japan’s criteria for recognising work-related mental disorders (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2023).

In France, incivility, threats and verbal or physical attacks on workers by people from outside the company, such as clients or service users, are called external violence and are handled under the employer’s general health and safety duty (INRS, 2023). Britain’s Health and Safety Executive also counts verbal abuse and threats from customers and the public as work-related violence and notes that serious or persistent verbal abuse can seriously affect mental health even without physical harm (Health and Safety Executive, 2024).

Korea’s labour ministry guideline sets out three steps for face-to-face service. First, ask the customer to stop the abuse, explain that it will not help solve the problem, and steer the conversation back to the problem, for example: “I understand you are upset, but if you tell me calmly I will help you. If the swearing and abuse continue, it will be hard for me to help.” Do not try to calm the person alone; get help from colleagues or security staff. The guideline also says a manager should step in to calm the customer before the friction grows. If the abuse continues, tell the customer you are going to record and then record; if it still continues after you have asked them to stop three or more times, explain that you cannot continue, leave, report to your manager and, if needed, ask the police for help. On the phone, say “I can no longer help you, so I am going to end this call” and end it (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019).

These steps are not something you must work out alone; they are procedures the company should set up. The same guideline says that apologising unconditionally or giving excessive compensation to customers who make unfair demands is not advisable, that a worker who has been harmed should not have to face the same customer again, and that staff should be given the authority to end a call after a warning. It also warns that recording without telling the customer first can lead to lawsuits over personal data (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019). Check whether your workplace has such a manual, and if you have been harmed, you can ask for measures such as stopping or changing your work (Ministry of Employment and Labor, 2023a).

Japan’s company manual from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare likewise says not to deal with it alone but to hand over to a manager straight away, to collect evidence a third party can check, such as recordings and notes of what happened, and to report words or actions that may be crimes, such as assault or threats, to the police. As an example, it suggests asking the customer to leave or ending the call once a stalemate has lasted about 30 minutes after the refusal has been made clear, adding that each company should set its own limit. At the same time, it stresses that legitimate complaints must never be labelled as harassment straight away (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2026). France’s INRS recommends not leaving an employee who has been a victim or witness of violence alone in the hours afterwards, and having victim support in place, such as psychological support and help with filing a complaint (INRS, 2023).

Personal effort is a supplement. Remember first that you can ask your employer for protective measures, and then look after your recovery. Switching off from work after hours is a well-studied approach. In a meta-analysis of 86 publications with 91 samples (38,124 people), those who detached better from work had less exhaustion, more life satisfaction and better sleep, while higher job demands made detaching harder (Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah, 2017). In a meta-analysis of 30 studies (3,725 people), programmes that help with this had an average effect of d = 0.36, and longer, more intensive ones worked better (Karabinski et al., 2021). Recovery activities such as exercise were also linked with less strain, and recovery seems to be better in natural settings (Sonnentag et al., 2017).

Do not swallow it alone; talk it through. In a meta-analysis of 142 samples (68,354 people), support at work was more strongly related to outcomes when it came from a supervisor. Support did not always ease stress, though, and the opposite effect was also common (Mathieu et al., 2019). In the Danish study too, burnout was lower in workplaces where staff could discuss difficult cases together and vent to colleagues or managers (Andersen et al., 2025).

How you handle emotions matters too. In a meta-analysis of 57 studies (29,053 people), reappraisal, looking at the situation differently, was generally protective, while suppression, pushing feelings down, went with burnout (Lim et al., 2026). There is evidence that mindfulness can help: in a meta-analysis of 23 randomised trials of workplace mindfulness, stress (g = 0.56), anxiety (g = 0.62) and psychological distress (g = 0.69) fell, but results for burnout were mixed and no conclusion could be drawn (Bartlett et al., 2019). In a small experiment that randomly assigned 64 people, self-guided mindfulness practice lowered emotional exhaustion by reducing surface acting (Hülsheger et al., 2013). Things to try straight away are in Stress relief: what helps, built-up anger in How to manage anger, and sleep problems in Insomnia: what helps.

If you cannot sleep, or low mood and anxiety have lasted more than two weeks, do not carry it alone; consider talking to a professional. You can look at your mood and anxiety over the past two weeks with the PHQ-9 depression check-in and the GAD-7 anxiety check-in. If you have been assaulted or threatened, report it to the police.

In Korea, the KOSHA Workers’ Health Centres (1577-6497) give priority to workers at workplaces with fewer than 50 employees, and the Occupational Trauma Centres (1588-6497) counsel workers who need help with work-related trauma from serious accidents, workplace bullying, emotional labour and more (Ministry of Employment and Labor, 2023b). Questions about employers’ duties or reporting can go to the labour ministry’s call centre on 1350 (charged, weekdays 9:00 to 18:00) (Ministry of Employment and Labor, n.d.). In England, you can refer yourself to NHS talking therapies for anxiety and depression without a diagnosis (NHS, 2025). Elsewhere, start with your family doctor, occupational health service or local mental health services.

If things feel like too much and you have thoughts of harming yourself, please do not carry them alone. Reach out to a crisis line right away: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. In Korea, call 109 (24 hours, free).

Q. Is emotional labour an illness? A. No. Emotional labour is a kind of work, and the ICD-11 diagnostic guidance has no such entry (WHO, 2024). But frequently faking feelings on the surface has been linked with exhaustion, depression and anxiety (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Zhao et al., 2025), so if you have been worn out for a long time, consider talking to a professional.

Q. Is there an emotional labour test? A. mind.io does not offer an emotional labour test. Korean researchers have built the Korean Emotional Labor Scale, whose 2025 revision asks 11 questions about emotional regulation, emotional dissonance, and also the company’s monitoring and protective system (Jeung et al., 2025). The burnout check shows how exhausted you are personally and at work, but it does not measure emotional labour.

Q. What is the “emotional labourer protection act”? A. It is a popular name for the amendment to Korea’s Occupational Safety and Health Act that took effect in October 2018 (National Institute of Korean Language, n.d.). Now Article 41, it requires employers to take preventive measures against customer abuse and, when harm occurs, measures such as stopping work, longer breaks, treatment and counselling, and help with complaints (Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41; Enforcement Decree of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41).

Q. Can I hang up on a customer who is being abusive? A. The rule is to follow your company’s customer-service manual. The government guideline says to explain that you cannot continue and end the call if the abuse continues after you have asked three or more times for it to stop, and it advises companies to give staff the authority to hang up after a warning (Ministry of Employment and Labor & KOSHA, 2019). Japan’s company manual likewise gives, as an example, ending the call once a stalemate has lasted about 30 minutes after a clear refusal (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2026). If it is harming your health, you can, in Korea, ask for measures such as stopping work (Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41).

Q. Will I be less tired if I try to smile for real? A. The evidence is mixed. Deep acting had weaker links with harmful outcomes than surface acting (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011), but one study found it did not go with lower exhaustion either (Huppertz et al., 2020). Rather than trying to fix it with attitude alone, protection from the workplace, such as rest support and help dealing with customers, comes first (Yang, 2022).

Q. If customer abuse leaves me depressed, does it count as an industrial accident? A. It can. In Korea, an illness caused by work-related mental stress from customer abuse is defined as an occupational disease (Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, Article 37). Japan also added serious nuisance behaviour by customers to its criteria for work-related mental disorders in 2023 (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2023).

Q. Is every customer complaint harassment? A. No. Legitimate complaints must not be labelled harassment straight away (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2026); the problem is words or actions that go beyond what is socially acceptable and harm the person working (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2025). Korean law likewise speaks of abuse and assault beyond what is reasonable (Occupational Safety and Health Act, Article 41).

Q. Is the “emotional labour” people talk about in relationships and at home the same thing? A. The same word is used, but this guide is about emotional labour in paid work. Emotion management comes up both in private life and at work (Ma et al., 2023). If constantly holding back your feelings to fit in with others weighs on you in relationships, see People-pleasing too.

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