A man who gets angry at work may well be admired for it, but a woman who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as out of control and incompetent, a new study shows. What’s more, the finding may have implications for Hillary Clinton as she attempts to become the first female US president, according to its author Victoria Brescoll, a post-doctoral scholar at Yale University.
Her research paper, When Can Angry Women Get Ahead?, noted that a leading Republican described Clinton as “too angry to be elected president”.
The new research finds these views to prevail among men and women alike, liberals and conservatives alike, sexists and non-sexists alike. In the words of the study’s author, the findings suggest bias against angry women to be “a deep-seated and even implicit reaction that people are subject to regardless of their conscious beliefs that sexism or group dominance is wrong.”
Previous research has indicated anger can communicate that an individual feels entitled to dominate others. However, these studies focused on men.
However, for a professional woman anger expression may lead to a decrease rather than an increase in her status.
Brescoll conducted three tests in which men and women recruited randomly watched videos of a job interview and were asked to rate the applicant’s status and assign them a salary.
Participants conferred the most status on the man who said he was angry, the second most on the woman who said she was sad, slightly less on the man who said he was sad and least of all by a sizable margin on the woman who said she was angry.
The average salary assigned to the angry man was almost $US38, 000 ($A44, 360) compared to about $US23,500 ($A27,430) for the angry woman and in the region of $US30,000 ($A35,020) for the other two candidates.
In a second experiment, the script was similar except that the job applicant also described his or her current occupation as a trainee or a senior executive.
“Participants rated the angry female CEO as significantly less competent than all of the other targets, including even the angry female trainee,” Brescoll wrote. She said “they viewed angry females as significantly more “out of control.”
That influenced salaries. Unemotional women were assigned on average $US55,384 ($A64,650) compared to $US32,902 ($A38,400) for the angry ones. Male executive candidates were assigned more than trainees, regardless of anger, with an average $US73,643 ($A86,000).
A third experiment tested whether a good reason for anger made any difference.
Sure enough, the angry woman with a good reason to be angry was awarded a much higher salary than the angry woman who provided no excuse, though it was still less than the men.
Dr. Brescoll concludes, “Women, like men, have the same need to achieve status and power. At the same time, to achieve and maintain high social status, professional women may also have to behave unemotionally in order to be seen as rational. Thus, it is important to identify strategies that professional women can use to express anger without incurring a social penalty. The present studies make a gesture in this regard with the finding that external, situational explanations for anger ameliorate negative responses to angry women.”
References
Brescoll, V. (2007). When Can Angry Women Get Ahead? Status Conferral, Gender, and Workplace Emotion Expression. Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.
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, 268-275.
2 Comments
I think this article misses some important aspects as it focusses only on the emotion of anger not the content of communication.
In the workplace, men can tend to use anger in relation to work place and work performance aspects as they feel entitled to do this and very often it can be interpreted by some, up to a point as “strong leadership”.
If the communication moves away from workplace aspects, men will tend to bring it back to that subject.
In contrast, women still have difficulty in the workplace remaining objective and keeping within their sphere of “righteous anger” like men do.
They are more likely to move quickly away from the workplace aspects and start making personal and unprofessional remarks. behaving like the classic “bitch” to win the argument. They lose focus and really do “lose control”.
Women can get angry and retain “admiration”, but only if they stay in the sphere of “righteous anger” namely angry about performance or work related aspects and bringing the topic back to that rather than becoming personally offended and drifting off into personal insults and grudge holding.
The other aspect is entirely biological and has to do with how people react to the pitch of a voice.
A deep male voice is seen as more authoratitive, combined with anger it creates a very serious and fearful disposition.
A high pitched or shrill voice is seen as more childish or immature (whether its a man or a woman), combined with anger it can be perceived as emotional immaturity and annoying, just unpleasant to the ears!
Unfortunately, women tend to have higher pitched voices.
So, in relation to strategies being used by women so they can use anger and remain respected (no one should really be using anger in the workplace anyway but ..)
1. Use the lower registers of your voice and do not move into high pitched or shrill shrieking … speak slowly.
2. Keep the topic within your “righteous sphere”. Those aspects of your work that people might expect you to get angry about if it affected your work performance or other workplace aspects. Do not make the argument personal or bring in unrelated material. Keep bringing it back to your “righteous sphere” if the content drifts.