Lifetime Achievement Award

The Emotions Section Lifetime Achievement Award Committee (Amy Kroska (chair), Karen Hegtvedt, and Phyllis L. F. Rippey) unanimously selected Dr. Rebecca Erickson for this year’s award.  Becky’s pioneering research on emotion labor, emotion management, authenticity, burnout, work, family, and gender has made groundbreaking theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the sociology of emotions and to the social sciences more broadly.  Becky is also a first-rate public sociologist who uses workshops and other types of outreach to show how her findings can be used to help the people she studies.  Finally, as her letters make very clear, she is also an outstanding and inspirational mentor.  We congratulate Becky for this well-earned recognition and thank her for her tremendous contributions to the field!

Below we provide a few excerpts from her many glowing letters of support.

“…Becky was a pioneer in the quantitative study of emotional labor. Her 1989 survey of bank and hospital workers (with Amy Wharton) was the first to measure and test many of Hochschild’s insights regarding emotional labor. Her research on authenticity, emotion management, burnout, gender, family, and work served as the foundation upon which countless studies of workplace emotional regulation were developed.”

“Her work spans ground-breaking theoretical contributions, empirical work that quantifies and tests hypotheses in emotion management theory, and methodological contributions to the study of emotion using surveys and audio diaries.  While recognized by other organizations, her long trajectory of excellent research has profoundly benefitted the subfield of the sociology of emotions.”

“Becky’s research reaches beyond the subfield of emotions, beyond the discipline, and beyond academia. Not only do psychologists, management studies, and communication scholars use her work, but she has collaborated with psychologists and nursing scholars on a number of projects.”

“Dr. Erickson has been a leader in the emotions section for decades, her work contributing theoretically, methodologically, substantively, and practically. She is also one of the subfield’s most well-known public sociologists, in that her career has always included outreach to and for communities she studies.”