In a world where emotional intelligence (EI) is hailed as the golden ticket to career success and personal fulfilment, few ask what happens when the pressure to ‘manage emotions’ becomes a source of exhaustion?
A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that nearly 40 per cent of employees with high emotional intelligence report experiencing burnout. From nurses masking despair during COVID-19 surges to customer service representatives forcing smiles for hostile clients, the dark side of EI is quietly fuelling a burnout epidemic.
The increasing demand for emotional intelligence
Emotional labour — the emotional and mental effort required to regulate emotions to meet certain expectations — is often framed as a valuable skill in both professional and personal life. However, it can become a silent tax on mental health, disproportionately affecting those expected to perform it.
Consider the flight attendant who must stay calm when facing difficult passengers or the teacher who suppresses frustration to maintain classroom harmony. These roles demand surface acting or faking emotions, and acting, or internalizing them, both of which deplete emotional reserves — the mental and emotional ‘energy’ we use to manage stress, interact patiently, or regulate feelings.
Here’s the paradox: EI helps us navigate emotions, but it also heightens our sensitivity to others’ feelings. A 2024 study published in BMC Psychology reviewed multiple research studies and found that employees with high EI, measured by objective psychometric tests, often face greater emotional demands. They are frequently tasked with resolving conflicts or soothing distressed colleagues, blurring the lines between professional and personal boundaries.
Despite this, EI is increasingly considered a non-negotiable ‘soft skill’ sought by employers across various industries. Platforms like LinkedIn glorify EI as a hallmark of ‘successful’ individuals, creating pressure to curate emotionally polished online identities — digital personas that mask vulnerability to project constant composure and positivity.
For instance, a corporate professional might post, “Thrilled to lead another high-stakes project,” while concealing their burnout. These performances, rewarded with likes and career opportunities, blur the line between emotional labour and self-worth. The result? A generation of over-performers who equate their value with the ability to appear perpetually composed.
Job postings increasingly list EI as a requirement, pressuring employees to adopt personas that align with organizational expectations. A 2024 study in the Frontiers in Psychology found that Romanian managers operating in hierarchical work cultures experienced heightened burnout. Top executives with high EI faced greater emotional demands as their roles required constant emotional regulation to maintain authority and morale.
The rising demand for EI is reflected in educational practices, with universities now teaching it as a career-prep tool and incorporating it into résumé-building seminars. However, in Nurse Education Today, students report anxiety about ‘failing’ to meet emotional benchmarks in academic settings. These expectations — maintaining positivity, demonstrating empathy, and managing conflict — are often subjective and unattainable, leaving students vulnerable to self-doubt and exploitation.
Unlike academic benchmarks, emotional benchmarks are open to interpretation, creating a high-stakes environment where students feel judged on their ability to perform emotional labour rather than demonstrate concrete skills.
This pressure is particularly evident in group projects and internships, where students often overextend themselves emotionally to avoid being labelled ‘difficult’ or ‘uncooperative.’ The absence of clear boundaries or institutional support exacerbates this vulnerability, leading to emotional exhaustion and burnout. Framing EI as a success metric risks reducing it to a tool for compliance, perpetuating a culture that prioritizes performative emotional labour over genuine growth and well-being.
The hidden costs of emotional labour
To be clear, emotional intelligence and emotional labour with our environments and the people in them are not the problem. The issue arises when EI becomes a burden or an undue expectation.
Specifically, EI becomes problematic when certain social, cultural, and environmental pressures push individuals to perform emotional labour and manage both their own emotions and those of others in ways that undermine healthy emotional experiences, processing, and negotiation. As decades of psychological and social research have shown, emotions are essential to human flourishing, and suppressing or mismanaging them can lead to destructive tendencies and mental health issues.
However, not only is suppressing emotions unhealthy, but overextending them is as well. In environments and professional or gender roles that demand certain emotional qualities, emotional exhaustion and diminished authenticity are common outcomes.
For example, a 2024 study published in Behavioral Sciences examined how EI moderates the relationship between nurses’ preparedness to care for COVID-19 patients and their quality of work life. The study found that those with high EI experienced higher burnout rates. Their ability to empathize with patients’ suffering led to chronic stress, while hospitals relied on their emotional labour to compensate for systemic understaffing.
Additionally, in the context of parenthood and under patriarchal gender roles, mothers are expected to be masters of EI when raising children and creating a safe, nurturing home environment. The widely expected norm for fathers, however, is to provide materially and financially, but not necessarily emotionally. This leaves the emotional labour to the mother, and an overemphasis on EI can create a dissonance between genuine feelings and performed emotions.
A study by Jill Zambito titled “Octopus moms: the lived experiences of college students who are mothers” explores this phenomenon. The study examines the challenges faced by student mothers as they balance academic responsibilities and motherhood. One participant described managing multiple tasks as being a “robot.” This sentiment reflects the emotional dissonance many mothers encounter as they strive to meet societal expectations while suppressing their authentic emotions.
So, what happens when empathy — a common expression of EI — is weaponized by workplaces and centuries-old norms and expectations? Throughout history, empathy has helped our survival by enhancing interpersonal and community bonding and facilitating connections. But when empathy and other forms of emotional labour are weaponized solely for survival, rather than connection, it can lead to unintended consequences, such as emotional cynicism — distrust and pessimism towards others’ intentions.
Rethinking the narrative of EI
A groundbreaking 2024 study on the misuse of emotional labour in workplaces discusses how EI can be harmful to workers, specifically related to burnout and motivation. This challenges the prevailing view of EI as a purely positive force, revealing its potential harm when exploited by our workplaces. It also highlights the need to shift the conversation on EI — from viewing it as an individual responsibility to addressing systemic factors, such as unrealistic workload expectations and poor organizational support.
So, what do healthy emotional skills and intelligence look like in an emotionally demanding world? And how can we harness the benefits of EI without burning ourselves out? By redefining success, we can set and normalize emotional boundaries that are tailored to individual needs.
Also, systemic support and changes to address workplace inadequacies — such as understaffing, unreasonable demands, and lack of mental health days — can help distribute emotional labour more equally and justly across a team. Workplaces should also implement metrics to measure emotional workloads alongside traditional productivity measurements. As the saying goes, “If we can quantify it, we can manage it.”
These changes, paired with individual practices of self-compassion and rest, can truly foster healthier individuals, and, ultimately, healthier workplaces. True EI lies not in suppressing emotions, but in creating environments where authenticity and wellbeing coexist with professionalism.
