GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS STANFORD UNIVERSITY Research Paper No . 1615 Anger and Advancement versus Sadness and Subjugation : The Effect of Negative Emotion Expressions On Social Status Conferral

Four studies examine status conferral (decisions about to whom positions of status and power should be given). All of the studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the first study, participants watched a video of President Clinton expressing either anger or sadness when talking about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Those who saw the anger clip were more likely to believe that Clinton should remain president than those who saw the sad clip. In the second study, participants said they were more likely to vote for an unknown political candidate when they saw him deliver a speech about terrorism in an angry way than when they saw the same speech delivered in a sad way. The third study showed that a manager's ratings of how likely people in his department were to be promoted were positively correlated with co-workers' ratings of the degree to which these workers expressed anger at work. In the final study, participants who viewed a job candidate describing himself as having felt angry about a negative event from his previous job assigned him a higher status position and a higher salary than when the job candidate said he felt sad about the event. Further, Studies 2,3, and 4 showed that anger expressions created impressions that the expressor was competent, and, these perceptions of competence mediated the relationship between emotion expression and status conferral. Expressions on Social Status Conferral " Every real leader knew that the occasional outburst of unexplained anger was good…. " Wolfe (1998), p. 150 In Tom Wolfe's recent novel, A Man in Full, the protagonist business tycoon loses much of the power and status he spent his life attaining. In his quest to maintain what status remains and reclaim what is gone, he ponders his philosophy of leadership. As reflected in the quotation above, he believes that expressions of anger can bring power and status to the expressor. Individuals vary in how much they desire status and power (Winter, 1973), but the motivation to have influence and be recognized as valuable is most likely universal quest for status influences a myriad of interpersonal phenomena from dyadic interpersonal situations to the interactions of nations with one another (Frank, 1985). Yet, the dynamics of status striving have not captured the attention of social psychologists. There is very little research on what people do to …