May 2000, Volume 68, Number 3

Social Psychology There's Power in Anger Illustration by Regan Dunnick WHEN PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON dealt with the excruciating Monica Lewinsky matter, many Americans opined that if only the president would convert his finger-waving anger to a show of remorse, the public would forgive him. True or false? The answer: False. A social psychological experiment by Larissa Tiedens, assistant professor of organizational behavior, suggests that Clinton preserved his standing more effectively by showing anger. Much of Tiedens' research looks at how a person's emotional expressions affect the way others award that person status and power. Her findings have implications for corporate behavior and the kinds of people we are likely to promote. Tiedens has examined what emotions people value most in a leader: anger or sadness and guilt. "I have focused on negative emotions because people think most about who deserves power when things go wrong," says Tiedens. "The emotions expressed in response to a negative event can influence people's views about who deserves status and power." In her study involving President Clinton, Tiedens extracted excerpts of Clinton's grand jury testimony about the Lewinsky affair. One clip showed him with angry facial expressions, talking in a testy tone. In a second clip, he was remorseful, suggesting he had done wrong, not Ms. Lewinsky. The study was run early in 1999 before the congressional decision to impeach. At the time, many people suggested Clinton should be punished because he was cavalier and blaming. But when Tiedens showed the two excerpts to two groups of undergraduates, the group that saw the angry tape was more likely to believe that Clinton should remain president than the group that saw the remorseful clip. Tiedens interviewed the students after running the test. Perhaps more revealingly, students from both groups continued to insist that to be more sympathetic, Clinton should apologize more. No one said he should be angrier. "They didn't seem to have a conscious recognition that anger actually led them to support this person more," she says. People may have had preconceived notions about the president. To screen out the effects of publicity, Tiedens ran a second experiment in which an actor portrayed a politician giving a speech about terrorism. He delivered the talk once in an angry way and a second time in a sad way. Again, viewers of the angry politician believed he was more effective than those who saw the sad one. In a third test, Tiedens studied 24 employees at a Palo Alto software company. Each worker received a list of coworkers and a list of emotions. They had to rate how often their colleagues expressed anger. At the same time, the group manager filled out a questionnaire indicating how likely he would be to promote each of the employees. The degree to which people were rated by coworkers as expressing a lot of anger predicted the degree to which the manager said he would promote them—that is, the more angry, the more likely to be promoted. In a fourth study, MBA students watched a video clip of a job interview. The applicant was asked to describe a negative event, such as an office presentation that went wrong. In one case, the applicant exuded anger about the event. In another tape, the applicant said he felt guilty and sad that people had been let down. The MBA students were asked if they would hire the applicant they had just seen. They were equally willing to hire both applicants, but they slotted the one who displayed anger for a higher-level, higher-paying job than the applicant who showed sadness. Why do people rate angry people so highly? Anger leads to perceptions of capability. In the three studies that did not involve Clinton, Tiedens asked why the angry leaders were favored. Participants said they saw them as being highly competent. At the same time, participants said those expressing sadness or guilt were viewed as likable and warm, though not chosen for leadership. "People are making the decisions about who will get status based not on socio-emotional characteristics such as warmth and likability, but on competence characteristics," says Tiedens. "The question is whether those are the only characteristics that should matter. "Rewarding anger with promotions could result in a lot of problems for an organization, but at the same time, anger is not necessarily entirely bad," Tiedens adds. "Anger can be useful. Anger is a very concise and powerful way to communicate when things are going wrong. When a supervisor doesn't get angry in some situations—if, for example, people are acting inappropriately—there can be dire consequences." BARBARA BUELL "Anger and Advancement versus Sadness and Subjugation: The Effect of Negative Emotion Expressions and Social Status Conferral," Larissa Z. Tiedens, GSB Research Paper #1615, January 2000 "Powerful Emotions: The Vicious Cycle of Social Status Positions and Emotions," Larissa Z. Tiedens, in N. Ashkanasy, C. Hartel, and W. Zerbe (eds.), Emotions in the Workplace: Research, Theory, and Practice, Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 2000

The emotions expressed in response to a negative event can influence people's views about who deserves status and power.

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