Do the jerks in your office get all the promotions? Is their advice
regarded more highly than yours? Studies published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology show that an individual's expressions
of anger can cause observers to confer more status and power on him or
her.
The author of the studies, Larissa Z. Tiedens, Ph.D., an assistant
professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, had previously
determined that high status individuals are more likely to feel anger.
"This seemed to be the next logical step," she says, "seeing whether
people watching someone express anger believe that that person deserves
status."
In one procedure, Tiedens asked employees at a software company to
rate each coworker on how often he or she expressed certain emotions and
how much they could learn from that person. In addition, the group
manager noted how likely he would be to promote each employee. Those who
expressed the most anger were more likely to be promoted and perceived as
more knowledgeable.
Tiedens also asked two groups of MBA students to watch a job
interview in which an applicant detailed how he once lost a client. One
applicant said he felt angry about the experience, while the other
expressed guilt. The participants favored the guilty applicant when
deciding whom to hire, but believed the angry applicant deserved a
higher-level, higher-paying job.
In a third experiment, Tiedens showed participants excerpts of
President Clinton's grand-jury testimony about the Monica Lewinsky
affair. Half the group saw a video clip of Clinton talking angrily, and
the other half viewed him speaking contritely.
At the time of the study, Congress hadn't yet impeached Clinton,
and polls and pundits suggested that he needed to express more remorse to
avoid punishment. But Tiedens' study found that participants who viewed
the angry clip were more likely to believe that Clinton should remain
president.
Even so, participants were reluctant to believe that they had
responded positively to the angry video. Says Tiedens, "When people hear
these results, they say, 'I wouldn't do that.'"
Those of us in a position to grant status, at work or when voting,
aren't always aware of our biases. "We often make inferences on emotional
expressions that may or may not hold true," says Tiedens.
Tags:
assistant professor,
coworker,
graduate school of business,
jerks,
job interview,
journal of personality,
journal of personality and social psychology,
mba students,
observers,
president clinton,
pundits,
remorse,
school of business
