Mutual Emotional Labor as Method: Building Connections of Care in Qualitative Research

Emotional labor may be vital to the success of qualitative research studies, particularly longitudinal studies that depend on the maintenance of research relationships over time. Rather than being limited to the comportment of researchers toward their participants, however, we find that participants also actively engage in practices of emotional labor to manage researchers and guide research interactions. We document elements of such “mutual emotional labor” in the establishment of rapport, in crafting experiences of personalized therapeutic benefit from participating in interviews, and in efforts to navigate closure at the conclusion of research projects. We argue that by recognizing forms of reciprocal emotion management, researchers may be better equipped to engage in ethical research practices that serve not only knowledge production but also human connection and care.