Emotional Labor in Mathematics: Reflections on Mathematical Communities, Mentoring Structures, and EDGE

Terms such as "affective labor" and "emotional labor" pepper feminist critiques of the workplace. Though there are theoretical nuances between the two phrases, both kinds of labor involve the management of emotions; some acts associated with these constructs involve caring, listening, comforting, reassuring, and smiling. In this article I explore the different ways academic mathematicians are called to provide emotional labor in the discipline, thereby illuminating a rarely visible component of a mathematical life in the academy. Underlying this work is my contention that a conceptualization of labor involved in managing emotions is of value to the project of understanding the character, values, and boundaries of such a life. In order to investigate the various dimensions of emotional labor in the context of academic mathematics, I extend the basic framework of Morris and Feldman [33] and then apply this extended framework to the mathematical sciences. Other researchers have mainly focused on the negative effects of emotional labor on a laborer's physical, emotional, and mental health, and several examples in this article align with this framing. However, at the end of the article, I argue that mathematical communities and mentoring structures such as EDGE help diminish some of the negative aspects of emotional labor while also accentuating the positives.Comment: Revised version to appear in the upcoming volume A Celebration of EDGE, edited by Sarah Bryant, Amy Buchmann, Susan D'Agostino, Michelle Craddock Guinn, and Leona Harri

Public and Private Physical Affection Differences between Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples: The Role of Perceived Marginalization

Despite its connection with relationship satisfaction, research on physical affection is scarce and fails to disentangle private and public displays of affection.  It is important to examine both types if marginalized couples are less comfortable displaying affection publicly. The present study examined whether same-sex couples display less public (but not private) physical affection than different-sex couples due to stronger feelings of relationship marginalization. It also examined  how public/private affection and marginalization relate  to  relationship satisfaction.  Women in  committed  same-sex and different-sex relationships completed surveys of public affection, private affection, marginalization, and relationship satisfaction online.  As predicted, women in same-sex relationships displayed less public affection than those in different-sex relationships, an effect mediated by general societal marginalization.  Both private and public affection predicted higher relationship satisfaction, whereas feelings of marginalization  by friends/family  predicted lower relationship satisfaction.  We  discuss implications for  relationship counseling and propose new ways of looking at marginalization

Dancing Backwards in High Heels: Female Professors Experience More Work Demands and Special Favor Requests, Particularly from Academically Entitled Students

Although the number of U.S. female professors has risen steadily in recent years, female professors are still subject to different student expectations and treatment. Students continue to perceive and expect female professors to be more nurturing than male professors are. We examined whether students may consequently request more special favors from female professors. In a survey of professors (n = 88) across the United States, Study 1 found that female (versus male) professors reported getting more requests for standard work demands, special favors, and friendship behaviors, with the latter two mediating the professor gender effect on professors’ self-reported emotional labor. Study 2 utilized an experimental design using a fictitious female or male professor, with college student participants (n = 121) responding to a scenario in which a special favor request might be made of the professor. The results indicated that academically entitled students (i.e., those who feel deserving of success in college regardless of effort/performance) had stronger expectations that a female (versus male) professor would grant their special favor requests. Those expectations consequently increased students’ likelihood of making the requests and of exhibiting negative emotional and behavioral reactions to having those requests denied. This work highlights the extra burdens felt by female professors. We discuss possible moderators of these effects as well as the importance of developing strategies for preventing them

Having to Take a Stand: The Interactive Effects of Task Framing and Source Status on Attitudes

Some research has found that a minority message source is less persuasive than a majority source on personally relevant issues. In that research, participants were forewarned that they would have to report their attitudinal reactions. We hypothesized that if recipients were given an opinion-irrelevant (recall) task instead, source status would not affect attitudes. Participants were asked to read a strong, outcome-relevant, counterattitudinal persuasive essay presented by a minority or majority source under opinion or recall task directions. The minority was less persuasive than the majority in the opinion task condition, and this effect was mediated by source evaluation and favorable cognitive elaboration. No source status effects emerged in the recall task condition