The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

The book on emotional labour: flight attendants paid to be “nicer than natural”, and what it does to them.

Hochschild, A. R. (2012). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press (2012 edition).

Type

Book

Find it

doi.org/10.1525/9780520951853

Checked

Against the publisher record, 15 September 2026

Why it is on the list

Hochschild studied flight attendants, whose job was to be “nicer than natural”, and bill collectors, whose job was the reverse. She found that managing feeling for pay can estrange people from their own expressions. The course reads it as evidence that a managed social performance with a real cost is not an autistic peculiarity. It is ordinary enough to be a job description.