Chapter 8 Emotion work across cultures: A comparison between the United States and Germany

Emotion work can be defined as demands to display organizationally desired emotions regarding service-worker–customer interactions, as well as the psychological strategies necessary to regulate these emotional demands. This study applies a task-focused concept of emotion work and uses the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales (FEWS) in a cross-cultural context to measure emotional work demands. The original German FEWS was translated into English and the extent to which the new English FEWS is equivalent to the original German FEWS is evaluated. Cultural effects on emotion work job demands are demonstrated by comparisons between a US (N=51) and German (N=202) travel agent sample. Cultural comparisons suggest that emotional demands in the US sales service include less emotional dissonance (i.e. the requirement to show emotions not actually felt in a situation) than in Germany. Survey results are discussed in terms of implications for further cross-cultural research.