Set Shifting, Masking and Emotional Work in the Workplace Part Two
Masking is yet another term used in psychology. When you mask you are suppressing your natural personality and behaviours to conform to social pressures or conventional expected behaviours. An example of masking would be that your boss is rude to you and you are irritated by their lack of manners but you smile and say something polite in response.
Wearing a physical mask impairs the other person’s ability to read the mask wearer’s emotions.
I will leave it to you to investigate further things such as the Great Barrington Declaration, its funding source, and the suspicious influence it has had in reversing all public health protections, including wearing masks in public spaces, in many countries.
All of that considered, it is not likely a coincidence that the obscenely wealthy (CEOs and the like) are not keen to have employees continue to wear masks in any professional setting. It will not be that they are concerned for their employees’ freedoms, but rather the employee might more effectively guard their own thoughts and feelings behind a physical mask, leaving the boss at a disadvantage to know when to apply more pressure to generate increased acquiescence and universal alignment.
Physical mask added or not, masking is how you actively hide your dissent, disagreement, or natural behaviours. The trouble is that masking is difficult to achieve as we have naturally expressive faces.
Have you ever experienced the following scenario?
Someone more senior to you in the hierarchy says something demeaning and dismissive to you. You mask and smile. The senior person pauses and asks if you are okay or questions your response directly or indirectly. You double down and push a more outwardly happy and uncaring expression on your face to confirm that there are no issues.
We often struggle to generate the requisite effort to mask completely and fully in many situations and the above scenario reflects the likelihood that your true thoughts and feelings leaked through your initial masking attempt in your facial expression and body language.
Now take a look at this picture of Serena Williams taken very recently at the Critic’s Choice Awards:
Some of you will already know the background of this photo, but perhaps some of you do not.
The first thing to point out is that this is not a Duchenne smile or what we call a genuine smile that reaches to the eyes making the corners crinkle.
Here is an example of Serena Williams with a genuine smile:
Based on these photos, we can assume that the photographer caught Serena in the first photo above either as she was about to provide a full Duchenne smile, or this is her masked smile. It is unclear if the reflectiveness of her eye suggests she might have even been teary and upset, or if that was just how the light caught the natural moisture of her eye (I am guessing the latter myself).
But once we put that photo in context—the moment at which film director Jane Campion was giving her acceptance speech stating that the challenges she has overcome as a director and the success she has achieved (in the winning of the award) was more significant that the Williams (Venus and Serena) sisters’ achievements in tennis because they do not play against the guys as Jane Campion does—we can be pretty sure it was masked smile. Jane Campion has since apologized for her “thoughtless” comments, although I have not come across any response from Venus or Serena.
Here is an excerpt of the apology and it misses the mark:
“The fact is the Williams sisters have, actually, squared off against men on the court (and off), and they have both raised the bar and opened doors for what is possible for women in this world.”
Campion’s error was not that she failed to confirm that these women have also squared off against men. Her original comment framed the challenges of being a white woman in the white male-dominated film industry as being more significant than the challenges faced by two black women in a white-dominated sport. Venus and Serena Williams will have persisted in the face of barriers and challenges that are, almost entirely, inconceivable to Jane Campion. Her apology still suggests the error was one of positioning her superiority in overcoming challenges when equivalency was what should have been offered. However, no such equivalency should be claimed. Jane Campion’s failure, and not error, was to have no conception of how incomparable their respective successes are.
I bring this up because while we all mask in social and professional situations, it is something that we do not all use with the same frequency. Black, indigenous, non-binary and disabled people (to name only a few of the impacted groups) disproportionately mask in many professional and social situations.
Why do we mask? For the same reason as we set shift: we recognize that the hierarchy is existentially threatening. If we speak up or we express our displeasure or disagreement, we risk being pushed out of our jobs or outright fired. But for many, they also risk their emotional and physical safety as they may be targeted for serious abuse and dangerous working conditions when groups of workers take the boss’ lead and actually mob the dissenting worker and harm them.
The individual least likely to mask will be the one with the most power. And yet Serena Williams, a powerful woman in all the best senses of the word, presumably offered up a masked smile as a white woman blithely dismissed her struggles and successes. As such, I will refine my first statement as follows: the individual with the most ingrained, assumed and entitled level of power will be the one least likely to mask and also the same one most likely to trigger masking in others.
In the scientific literature both the expression and suppression of strong emotions, namely anger and hostility, correlate strongly to hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
On the face of it, that seems to suggest that just being angry makes you ill. But I would suggest that it is being powerless that makes you ill. Those explosively expressing anger and hostility might ostensibly be in power, or sense that they “can get away with” the emotional display, however the outburst comes from sensing a loss of power and status, and a need to reassert dominance. These are threat displays that mask inner anxiety and insecurity.
I am not suggesting that all expressions of anger are there to re-establish potency, but in the case of expressed anger and hostility that does impact health, it is likely the underlying issue is a perceived loss of power and status. Then there are those with an actual and sustained powerlessness and low status.
For low status and its negative health impacts, we need only look to the Whitehall Study. There is a clear one-to-one link between lower status in the civil service and every negative health outcome you can name and these impacts persist after retirement. Or you can read a rather nice New York Times explanation on this topic: For Good Health, It Helps To Be Rich And Important.
Masking is the suppression of natural emotions and behaviours and can be costly to health and wellbeing. The more you may be required to mask your true emotions and behaviours in a professional space, the more likely it will be that you suffer negative physical and psychological outcomes in your life.
There is some overlap in the literature on concepts of masking and emotional labour that I will turn to in the next segment in this piece. Once I have covered of concepts of emotional labour, then I will offer up ideas around how to address the dilemma of needing to earn a living in an environment that demands of you your set-shifting, masking and emotional labour all while protecting your safety, wellbeing and health. Next up, Part Three.
https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/03/14/what-did-jane-campion-say/
