Abstract: As social work professionals rapidly grow in number and their public services become increasingly refined, their emotional labor comes to directly affect their service outcomes and career development. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with front-line social workers and supervisors at Y institution in W city, this study systematically explores the practical models and formation mechanisms of social workers’ emotional labor. The research found that emotional labor is manifested, at the practical level, as shallow performance oriented towards compliance and deep performance characterized by genuine empathy. The former emphasizes the internalized execution of external rules, while the latter highlights the conscious identification with professional values. The formation mechanism of emotional labor is, on the one hand, rooted in the internal regulations of the profession including the guidance of professional values and the requirements of professional roles and, on the other hand, driven by the external demands of service recipients which are reflected in the diversity of service recipients and the complexity of service needs. The diverse practical service scenarios further shape the flexibility and comprehensiveness of social workers’ choices of emotional labor strategies. The emotional labor of social workers, therefore, is not only a professional behavior but also a result of the mutual influence of professional ethics, role expectations and service contexts.

Key words: social worker, emotional labor, practice mode, shallow performance, deep performance