Status Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace

Three studies examined the relationships among anger, gender, and status conferral. As in prior research, men who expressed anger in a professional context were conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness. However, both male and female evaluators conferred lower status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals. This was the case regardless of the actual occupational rank of the target, such that both a female trainee and a female CEO were given lower status if they expressed anger than if they did not. Whereas women’s emotional reactions were attributed to internal characteristics (e.g., ‘‘she is an angry person,’’ ‘‘she is out of control’’), men’s emotional reactions were attributed to external circumstances. Providing an external attribution for the target person’s anger eliminated the gender bias. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed. During an appearance on a national news program, the chairman of the Republican National Committee asserted that Senator Hillary Clinton was too angry to be elected president (Nagourney, 2006). This comment caught the media’s attention because it appeared to be motivated by her gender: They are casting Hillary Clinton as an Angry Woman, a shemonster melding images of Medea, the Furies, harpies . . . . This gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew. (Dowd, 2006, p. A21) Though politicians have always used such tactics to defame their opponents, this particular case raises interesting questions about whether expressing anger impedes a woman’s chances at winning a political race or gaining status in other professional arenas. Generally, emotion theorists suggest that displays of certain emotions, such as anger, can communicate that an individual is competent and is entitled to high social status (Shields, 2002, 2005; Tiedens, 2001). In a study consistent with this hypothesis, Tiedens (2001) found that men who expressed anger in professional settings were more likely to be hired than men who expressed sadness and were also given more status, power, and independence in their jobs. As Senator Clinton’s experience suggests, however, professional women who express anger may experience a decrease, rather than an increase, in their status. Women are expected to be kinder and more modest than men, and they evoke negative responses from other people if they fail to conform to this prescriptive stereotype (Heilman, 2001; Rudman, 1998). Female professionals who express anger violate this feminine norm and therefore may not experience the boost in status enjoyed by angry men (a possibility acknowledged by Tiedens, 2001). This idea converges with Ekman and Friesen’s (1969) concept of emotional display rules, which are ‘‘overlearned habits about who can show what emotion . . . males should not cry; females, except in a maternal role, should not show anger’’ (Ekman, 1984, p. 320). Such an effect is likewise predicted by Rudman and Fairchild’s (2004) integrative model of stereotype-based backlash. In their model, counterstereotypical actions are expectancy violations that provoke negative reactions from social perceivers. However, this backlash occurs only if a justification for derogating the counterstereotypical individual is available. In typical workplace situations in which a woman has expressed anger, there is probably enough ambiguity about the reason for her anger that some basis for derogation can be found. As a Address correspondence to Victoria Brescoll, Department of Psychology, Yale University, 309 Edwards St., New Haven, CT 06520, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 268 Volume 19—Number 3 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science result, negative responses to women who express anger could occur readily in professional contexts. Moreover, the expectation that a woman will not express anger publicly should affect attributions for the cause of her anger. Kelley’s (1967, 1973) attribution model stipulates that when a person’s behavior is characterized by low consensus (i.e., is different from that of peers), social perceivers are likely to attribute the behavior to internal characteristics (e.g., perceive anger as stemming from disposition, as opposed to features of the situation). According to this model, because anger and pride are the only emotions that people believe men express more than women (Plant, Hyde, Keltner, & Devine, 2000), a woman’s anger should be seen as internally caused (e.g., ‘‘she is an angry person,’’ ‘‘she is out of control’’) rather than externally instigated (e.g., ‘‘the situation was frustrating’’). Thus, people should view a man’s anger as a response to objective, external circumstances, but a woman’s anger as a product of her personality. As a result, a professional woman’s anger may imply that she is not competent at dealing with workplace situations, and may therefore lead perceivers to accord her less status. OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENT RESEARCH We report here three studies that tested these hypotheses. Study 1 examined whether participants conferred lower status on an angry woman than on an angry man and whether attributions for emotional reactions underlay the relation between expression of anger and conferral of status. Study 2 examined whether any low-status individual, and not just women, would be given low status after expressing anger and whether the internal attribution that angry female targets were ‘‘out of control’’ mediated the relation between expression of anger and conferral of status. Finally, Study 3 examined whether an angry woman who offered an external attribution for her anger would be accorded status as high as that of an angry man. Generally, people should view a man’s anger as a response to objective, external circumstances, but a woman’s anger as a product of her personality. As a result, a woman who expresses anger in the workplace will be accorded lower status than a man who does the same, unless she emphasizes the external circumstances that caused her anger. All analyses reported in this article included gender of the participant as an independent variable. No interactions involving this variable were significant, and therefore we collapsed across gender for all analyses. For all the studies reported in this article, we recruited adult participants in order to obtain a relatively representative, noncollege-student sample with workplace experience (Sears, 1986). We recruited these adult participants by placing flyers advertising the study at locations throughout a public park in Connecticut. Participants contacted us if they were interested in participating, completed the experiment individually in isolated laboratory rooms on campus or at a private off-campus location, and were compensated with their choice of a lottery ticket or $1.00. Most were Caucasian (85% on average), well educated, and politically moderate (M 5 3.91 on a 7-point liberalismconservatism scale).