Bending the rules of "professional" display: emotional improvisation in caregiver performances

Abstract

Organizational norms of emotional expression are open to negotiation through improvised performances, as employees may bend or break emotion rules to gain more leeway in expressiveness and participate in the development of their own role identities in the workplace. In this ethnographic study, a dramaturgical perspective is used to analyze the processes and outcomes of emotional improvisation as observed among nurses, technicians, and physicians in a cardiac care center. It was found that the emphasis on maintaining a "professional" appearance in caregiving largely constrains actors to perform along their scripted roles. Results are discussed in terms of practical implications for training/education for health care providers and recipients. This study complements Goffman's (1959, 1961) emphasis on external role-playing by considering actors' internal feelings in relationship to observable emotional displays.

Negotiating Status and Identity Tensions in Healthcare Team Interactions: An Exploration of Nurse Role Dialectics

“…Here, nurses tend to abide by medical culture norms Role Dialectics 109 which value detachment over emotional involvement (Morgan & Krone, 2001). Our data indicate that participants admired nurses who demonstrated emotional neutrality, especially in response to situations involving criticism from or conflict with physicians.…”

Locking Up Emotion: Moving Beyond Dissonance for Understanding Emotion Labor Discomfort The paper uses data from the author's dissertation, expertly advised by Dr. Stanley Deetz at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Earlier versions were presented at the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association, 2004 and the International Communication Association, 2001.

“…Correctional officers were also expected to express emotions that suggested they truly cared for inmates, similar to the emotion work of nurses (Morgan & Krone, 1999). NJ Captain Henry McMaster insisted that the best officers were those who ''truly took this job because you want to make a difference.''…”

“…[2] This question has also proven fruitful in past emotion labor studies (e.g., Hopfl & Linstead, 1993;Morgan & Krone, 1999).…”

Interpretative Repertoires That Shape Low-Income African American Women’s Reproductive Health Care Seeking: “Don’t Want to Know” and “Taking Charge of Your Health”

“…The logic is that more knowledge is always better than less knowledge; if a woman knows her disease status, then she can take efficacious action against any problems detected. Our analysis of the accounts provided by participants in this study reveals a different "logic" or form of "rationality" from this more mainstream modernist "technorationality" (Morgan & Krone, 2001). Emotionality and rationality are complexly and inextricably interwoven in this form of reasoning and knowing, and arguably "not knowing" has as important a function in keeping anxiety and imagined devastating consequences in abeyance as "knowing" in providing peace of mind.…”

“…In the traditional biomedical model of health care seeking and delivery, emotion is a downgraded form of experience and decision making, something undesirable to be minimized and controlled (Morgan & Krone, 2001). As Lupton (1998) points out, emotions have traditionally been positioned as "irrelevant or disruptive" to post-Enlightenment "rationality"; rational thought is privileged over irrational emotionality; rationality is associated with the thinking mind, whereas emotionality is associated with the feeling body; and rationality is disciplined, whereas emotionality is unruly (p. 3).…”