Despite past research suggesting that getting angry at work makes you look more important and brings positive results, a new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Princeton University found the opposite.
The study did four different tests, playing around with things like gender, who the anger was directed at, and the situation. It turns out, people don’t think expressing anger at work gets you more respect. Instead, they see it as not okay, unfriendly, too much, and not helpful for work goals. The study also challenges the idea that how men and women’s anger is seen at work is different.
Minimal benefit
Basically, this research goes against the usual thinking that says being angry at work is a good and useful emotion. The researchers looked into these ideas in the US using similar methods as before, doing four studies that asked if showing anger helps you get a higher status at work, if anger makes people think you’re good at your job, and if others like seeing anger at work.
“We found that anger isn’t a catalyst for higher status in the workplace,” the researchers explain. “Moreover, we found that anger is regarded more poorly than other emotional expressions like sadness. The only instance in which anger is considered as positive is when it is expressed in response to another person’s clear wrongdoing. These findings hold for both men and women expressing anger in the workplace.”
The results indicate that even though people might think that those who show anger have a higher status, the reality is different. When individuals express anger, they don’t actually gain more status. In fact, people see this anger as inappropriate, cold, too much, and not helpful for getting work done. The researchers also found that people have a negative view of anger at work, considering it more harmful, foolish, and worthless compared to other emotions.
Diminished status
In all four studies, the researchers played around with the emotions being shown—like anger, sadness, or no strong emotion. To figure out the status, they asked participants to say how much status, power, independence, and respect the person showing the emotion should have in the organization. They also asked participants to say the yearly salary they would give to the person expressing the emotion.
“To test the boundaries of our findings, we experimentally varied the gender of the worker expressing the emotion (i.e., men or women), the target of the emotional expression (i.e., another person, the circumstances), and the context in which the emotion was expressed (i.e., job interview, a normal workday),” the researchers explain.
“We experimentally varied the workers’ gender to understand whether our findings held for both men and women. This is important given some work demonstrating that women are penalized for expressing anger while men are rewarded.”
Contradictory findings
At first glance, it might seem like these results go against a lot of earlier research about gender and anger at work. Two possible reasons could be that the norms around how anger is expressed have changed over time or that we looked at different groups of people compared to earlier studies. But these two reasons don’t seem very likely.
Even though we recognize some limitations, these clear and consistent findings offer a different perspective from the current idea that anger is a good and useful emotion. These studies show a situation where anger doesn’t help someone’s status, whether they are a man or a woman.
While many recent studies and discussions in both scholarly journals and the public talk about the positive effects of showing anger, this study suggests that in the workplace, anger might not lead to the same positive results.
