New Haven, CT, USA. Whether you are running for president or looking for a clerical job, you cannot afford to get angry if you are a woman, according to new research. Three recently completed and separate studies explore a phenomenon that may be all-too-familiar to accomplished women and politicians women like New York Senator Hillary Clinton. People accept and even reward men who get angry but largely view women who lose their temper as less competent.

 

"An angry woman loses status, no matter what her position,'' said Brescoll, who worked in Clinton's office as a Congressional Fellow in 2004 while she was preparing her doctoral thesis on gender bias. She noticed over the years that women pay a clear price for showing anger and men don't.

 

In all studies, both men and women were shown videos of actors portraying men and women who were ostensibly applying for a job. The participants in the studies were then asked to rate applicants on how much responsibility they should be given, their perceived competence, whether they should be hired, and how much they should get paid.

 

Both men and women in the reached the same conclusions: Angry men deserved more status, a higher salary, and were expected to be better at the job than angry women.

 

When those actor/applicants expressed sadness, however, the bias was less evident, and women applicants were ranked equally to men in status and competence, but not in salary.

 

Brescoll and her colleague then compared angry job applicants to ones who did not display any emotion. And this time the researchers showed study participants videos of both men and women applying for lower-status jobs. The findings were duplicated: Angry men were valued more highly than angry women no matter what level position they were applying for. However, the disparities disappeared when men and women who were emotionally neutral were ranked.

 

A final study showed another way bias against female anger could be mitigated. When women actors explained why they were angry, observers tended to cut them more slack. However, Brescoll noted a final gender difference: Men could actually be hurt when they explained why they were angry — perhaps, says the Yale psychologist, because observers tend to see this as a sign of weakness.

 

Victoria Brescoll, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She worked in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton under a Congressional Fellowship from the Women’s Research and Education Institute, covering a variety of issues related to children and families. Her research interests include the applications of social psychology to public policy and law and, more broadly, media effects, persuasion, and stereotyping.

 

Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead? Status Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace. Victoria L. Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann. Psychological Science 19(3), 268–275. doi: 10.1111 / j.1467-9280.2008.02079.x

 

Abstract. Three studies examined the relationships among anger, gender, and status conferral. As in prior research, men who expressed anger in a professional context were conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness. However, both male and female evaluators conferred lower status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals. This was the case regardless of the actual occupational rank of the target, such that both a female trainee and a female CEO were given lower status if they expressed anger than if they did not. Whereas women's emotional reactions were attributed to internal characteristics (e.g., "she is an angry person," "she is out of control"), men's emotional reactions were attributed to external circumstances. Providing an external attribution for the target person's anger eliminated the gender bias. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed.

 

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