Who Respects an Angry Woman? Status Conferral, Competence, and Attribution Towards Angry Women Worker in Indonesia
Keywords:
Attribution, Competence, Gender, Status ConferralAbstract
Prior research indicated that men who expressed anger were often perceived as more competent and were granted higher status than women who expressed anger, who were instead viewed as driven by internal factors like personality. This study examined the relationship between expressed emotion, status, competence, and attribution in a professional context in Indonesia. Using a 2x2 between-subject design, 43 males (mean age = 21.74) and 135 females (mean age = 20.59) were randomly assigned to four scenarios. Participants completed questionnaires measuring perceived status (α=0.857), competence (α=0.830), and internal attribution (α=0.810). Findings revealed that angry male targets were rated as more competent than angry female targets (M = 12.73 vs. 10.63), with anger attributed more to external factors for men and to internal factors for women. There was no difference in perceptions of status, competence, or attribution in the "no emotion" condition. This study highlighted that in professional contexts, anger can enhance perceived competence for men but not for women, who were seen as less competent and more internally driven when expressing anger. Further research with a more diverse sample was recommended to strengthen effect size and power.
References
Adam, H., Shirako, A., & Maddux, W. W. (2010). Cultural variance in the interpersonal effects of anger in negotiations. Psychological Science, 21(6), 882-889.
Baribault, B., Donkin, C., Little, D. R., Trueblood, J. S., Oravecz, Z., Van Ravenzwaaij, D., ... & Vandekerckhove, J. (2018). Metastudies for robust tests of theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2607-2612.
Brescoll, V. L., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2008). Can an angry woman get ahead? Status conferral, gender, and expression of emotion in the workplace. Psychological science, 19(3), 268-275.
Cabral, J. C. C., de Souza Tavares, P., & de Almeida, R. M. M. (2016). Reciprocal effects between dominance and anger: A systematic review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 71, 761-771.
Cheng, J. T., Tracy, J. L., Foulsham, T., Kingstone, A., & Henrich, J. (2013). Two ways to the top: evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(1), 103.
Cheng, J. T., & Tracy, J. L. (2014). Toward a unified science of hierarchy: Dominance and prestige are two fundamental pathways to human social rank. The psychology of social status, 3-27.
Clark, M. S., Pataki, S. P., & Carver, V. (1996). Some thoughts and findings on self-presentation of emotions in relationships. In G. J. O. Fletcher & J. Fitness (Eds.), Knowledge structures in close relationships: A social psychological approach (pp. 247-274). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological review, 109(3), 573.
Eagly, A. H., Nater, C., Miller, D. I., Kaufmann, M., & Sczesny, S. (2020). Gender stereotypes have changed: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of U.S. public opinion polls from 1946 to 2018. American Psychologist, 75(3), 301–315.
Gaertig, C., Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2019). When does anger boost status?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85, 103876.
Gallois, C. (1993). The language and communication of emotion: universal, interpersonal, or intergroup?. American Behavioral Scientist, 36(3), 309-338.
Garber, M. (2017, November 6). All the angry ladies. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/all-the-angry-ladies/545042/
Gibson, D. E., Schweitzer, M. E., Callister, R. R., & Gray, B. (2009). The influence of anger expressions on outcomes in organizations. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2(3), 236-262.
Heilman, M. E. (2001). Description and prescription: How gender stereotypes prevent women's ascent up the organizational ladder. Journal of social issues, 57(4), 657-674.
Johnson, C.A. & Hawbaker, KT. (2018, May 25). #MeToo: A timeline of events. Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-me-too-timeline20171208-htmlstory.html
Kim, H., & Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(4), 785.
Kirkman, M. S., & Oswald, D. L. (2020). Is it just me, or was that sexist? The role of sexism type and perpetrator race in identifying sexism. The Journal of Social Psychology, 160(2), 236-247.
Klonis, S. C., Plant, E. A., & Devine, P. G. (2005). Internal and external motivation to respond without sexism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(9), 1237-1249.
Knutson, B. (1996). Facial expressions of emotion influence interpersonal trait inferences. journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 20(3), 165-182.
Kunst, J.R., Bailey, A., Prendergast, C. & Gundersen, A. (2019). Sexism, rape myths and feminist identification explain gender differences in attitudes toward the #metoo social media campaign in two countries. Media Psychology, 22(5), 818-843.
Labott, S. M., Martin, R. B., Eason, P. S., & Berkey, E. Y. (1991). Social reactions to the expression of emotion. Cognition & Emotion, 5(5-6), 397-417.
Hess, U., Adams Jr, R., & Kleck, R. (2005). Who may frown and who should smile? Dominance, affiliation, and the display of happiness and anger. Cognition & Emotion, 19(4), 515-536.
Landy, J. F., Jia, M. L., Ding, I. L., Viganola, D., Tierney, W., Dreber, A., ... & Crowdsourcing Hypothesis Tests Collaboration. (2020). Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results. Psychological bulletin, 146(5), 451.
Lerner, J. S., & Tetlock, P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological bulletin, 125(2), 255.
Maner, J. K., & Case, C. R. (2016). Dominance and prestige: Dual strategies for navigating social hierarchies. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 54, pp. 129-180). Academic Press.
McCormick-Huhn, K., & Shields, S. A. (2021). Favorable evaluations of black and white women’s workplace anger during the era of# metoo. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 594260.
Monin, B., Pizarro, D. A., & Beer, J. S. (2007). Deciding versus reacting: Conceptions of moral judgment and the reason-affect debate. Review of general psychology, 11(2), 99-111.
Rudman, L. A. (1998). Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: the costs and benefits of counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(3), 629.
Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2001). Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward agentic women. Journal of social issues, 57(4), 743-762.
Salerno, J. M., & Peter-Hagene, L. C. (2015). One angry woman: Anger expression increases influence for men, but decreases influence for women, during group deliberation. Law and human behavior, 39(6), 581.
Salerno, J. M., Peter-Hagene, L. C., & Jay, A. C. (2019). Women and African Americans are less influential when they express anger during group decision making. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(1), 57-79.
Salerno, J. M., Phalen, H. J., Reyes, R. N., & Schweitzer, N. J. (2018). Closing with emotion: The differential impact of male versus female attorneys expressing anger in court. Law and Human Behavior, 42(4), 385.
Schaerer, M., Du Plessis, C., Nguyen, M. H. B., Van Aert, R. C., Tiokhin, L., Lakens, D., ... & Gender Audits Forecasting Collaboration. (2023). On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 179, 104280.
Schmidt, S. (2009). Shall we really do it again? The powerful concept of replication is neglected in the social sciences. Review of general psychology, 13(2), 90-100.
Shariff, A. F., & Tracy, J. L. (2009). Knowing who’s boss: Implicit perceptions of status from the nonverbal expression of pride. Emotion, 9(5), 631.
Simons, D. J. (2014). The value of direct replication. Perspectives on psychological science, 9(1), 76-80.
Soklaridis, S., Zahn, C., Kuper, A., Gillis, D., Taylor, V. H., & Whitehead, C. (2018). Men’s fear of mentoring in the# MeToo era—what’s at stake for academic medicine. N Engl J Med, 379(23), 2270-2274.
Tiedens, L. Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of personality and social psychology, 80(1), 86.
Tiedens, L. Z., Ellsworth, P. C., & Mesquita, B. (2000). Sentimental stereotypes: Emotional expectations for high-and low-status group members. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(5), 560-575.
Tierney, W., Hardy III, J. H., Ebersole, C. R., Leavitt, K., Viganola, D., Clemente, E. G., ... & Hiring Decisions Forecasting Collaboration. (2020). Creative destruction in science. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 291-309.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., van der Maas, H.L.J. & Kievit, R.A. (2012). An agenda for purely confirmatory research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 632-638
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Rosatyani Puspita Adiati, Hendrikus Anung Anindito
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
