Search

Previous research suggests that women, more than men, experience negative outcomes when they display dominance. A closer look, however, reveals ambiguity about the specific forms of dominance proscribed for women. Here, we suggest that negative reactions to women's dominance, a counter-stereotypical behavior, may require that the behavior be clearly encoded as counter-stereotypical-which is less likely when the behavior is expressed implicitly. This hypothesis was tested with a meta-analysis of studies on the evaluation of individuals behaving dominantly, including articles not directly investigating gender. Results revealed that dominance indeed hurts women's, relative to men's, likability (although the overall effect is small, d = -0.19, k = 63), as well as more downstream outcomes such as hireability (d = -0.58, k = 20). More important, however, dominance expressed explicitly (e.g., direct demands) affected women's likability (d = -0.28) whereas implicit forms of dominance (e.g., eye contact) did not (d = 0.03). Finally, the effect of dominance on men's and women's perceived competence did not differ (d = 0.02, k = 31), consistent with the idea that it is interpersonal (rather than instrumental) evaluations that obstruct women leaders. Implications for theory, and for the success of male and female leaders, are discussed.

Baumeister et al. propose that role differentiation is critical for group functioning. We propose that effective groups require rank differentiation in addition to role differentiation. We suggest that rank differentiation supports division of labor by incentivizing group members, satisfying fundamental human needs, and organizing and integrating the contributions of differentiated group members.

We tested the hypothesis that social hierarchies are fluent social stimuli; that is, they are processed more easily and therefore liked better than less hierarchical stimuli. In Study 1, pairs of people in a hierarchy based on facial dominance were identified faster than pairs of people equal in their facial dominance. In Study 2, a diagram representing hierarchy was memorized more quickly than a diagram representing equality or a comparison diagram. This faster processing led the hierarchy diagram to be liked more than the equality diagram. In Study 3, participants were best able to learn a set of relationships that represented hierarchy (asymmetry of power)--compared to relationships in which there was asymmetry of friendliness, or compared to relationships in which there was symmetry--and this processing ease led them to like the hierarchy the most. In Study 4, participants found it easier to make decisions about a company that was more hierarchical and thus thought the hierarchical organization had more positive qualities. In Study 5, familiarity as a basis for the fluency of hierarchy was demonstrated by showing greater fluency for male than female hierarchies. This study also showed that when social relationships are difficult to learn, people's preference for hierarchy increases. Taken together, these results suggest one reason people might like hierarchies--hierarchies are easy to process. This fluency for social hierarchies might contribute to the construction and maintenance of hierarchies.

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants’ desire to evaluate others’ ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated.

Some power cues are explicit, obvious and salient, while others are implicit, subtle and harder to detect. Drawing from research demonstrating that people assimilate to implicit cues and contrast from explicit ones, we suggest that implicit and explicit power cues have different effects on people. Two laboratory experiments found that when power cues were implicit, people in high power conditions assimilated to stereotypes of power; they had relatively higher independent self construals, and they were more likely to see themselves as autonomous from, rather than connected to, others. The opposite effect emerged when power cues were explicit. These effects were replicated in a third study, where working adults rated their own power at work and the explicitness of power cues in their workplaces. We also found that power and cue explicitness predicted co-worker support, and that this effect was mediated by self construals. These results suggest that the way power is conveyed and expressed can influence important outcomes in organizations.

When people blame others for their mistakes, they learn less and perform worse. This problem is magnified when blame becomes embedded in the shared culture of groups and organizations. Yet, little is known about whether—and, if so, how—the propensity to blame spreads from one person to another. Four experiments addressed this issue, demonstrating that blame is socially contagious: observing an individual make a blame attribution increased the likelihood that people would make subsequent blame attributions for their own, unrelated, failures (Experiments 1, 2, and 4). Results also indicated that this “blame contagion” is due to the transmission of goals. Blame exposure led to the inference and adoption of a self-image protection goal (Experiment 3), and blame contagion was eliminated when observers had the opportunity to alleviate this self-image protection goal via self-affirmation (Experiment 4). Implications for research on causal attributions, social contagion, and cultural transmission are discussed.

In three studies, observers based inferences about the cohesiveness and common fate of groups on the emotions expressed by group members. The valence of expressions affected cohesiveness inferences, whereas the consistency of expressions affected inferences of whether members have common fate. These emotion composition effects were stronger than those due to the race or sex composition of the group. Furthermore, the authors show that emotion valence and consistency are differentially involved in judgments about the degree to which the group as a whole was responsible for group performance. Finally, it is demonstrated that valence-cohesiveness effects are mediated by inferences of interpersonal liking and that consistency-common fate effects are mediated by inferences of psychological similarity. These findings have implications for the literature on entitativity and regarding the function of emotions in social contexts.

We hypothesized that anger expressions increase expressers’ ability to claim value in negotiations, but only when the recipients of these expressions have poor alternatives. This effect occurs because anger expression communicates toughness, and only recipients who have poor alternatives are affected by the toughness of their counterpart. In Experiment 1, participants read a scenario about a negotiator who either was angry or not. In Experiment 2, dyads negotiated face-to-face after one negotiator within each dyad was advised to show either anger or no emotion. In both studies, recipients of anger expressions who had poor alternatives conceded more. Experiment 2 also provided evidence that toughness ascribed to the expresser mediated the effect of anger expression on claiming value.

It is popularly believed that powerful people enjoy a nearly-absolute lack of constraints, and that powerless people suffer under overwhelming constraints; in fact, such differences largely define the social categories of ‘powerful person’ and ‘powerless person.’ This association of power-related social categories and constraint constitutes a stereotype that may lead perceivers to overlook other, more diagnostic information when explaining others’ behavior. As a result, the actions of powerholders may tend to be seen as dispositionally motivated and those of the powerless as situationally motivated. This should occur because of both real differences in constraint, and bias in the failure to account forother, more diagnostic information about constraint. Two studies support these predictions. In Study 1, participants judged powerless workers as more situationally motivated, especially under coercion, than both controls and powerholders, who were judged as more dispositional. In Study 2, given more fine-grained information about constraints and power, participants’ attributions reflected both accurate use of this information and bias. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. One way in which powerful people seem fortunate is that they seem able to do whatever they want. Powerless people, on the other hand, are subject to limitations and the control of others. As a result, when we hear about the actions of the powerful, we interpret them differently from those of people who are powerless; we may assume that the powerholder intended his or her action, but the powerless person was simply forced—by circumstance or a stronger party—to act. For example, imagine that you go to work on Monday and hear that John, a member of your department, was working all weekend. How do you and your co-workers explain John’s behavior? In this paper, we suggest that you will use John’s power in the organization as a cue about the likely causes of his behavior. We suggest that if John is a lowly employee, you may assume that he was compelled to be there. If John is the boss, however, you might be more likely to assume that he chose to be there, that his behavior reflected his own volition or even desire.

This paper reviews the impact of anger on judgment and decision making. Section I proposes that anger merits special attention in the study of judgment and decision making because the effects of anger often diverge from those of other negative emotions. Section II presents an Appraisal-Tendency Framework for predicting and organizing such effects. Section III reviews empirical evidence for the uniqueness of anger’s relations to judgment and decision making. Section IV connects the Appraisal-Tendency Framework to associated mechanisms and theories. Drawing on the evidence, Section V presents the question of whether anger should be considered a positive emotion. It also proposes the hypothesis that anger will be experienced as relatively unpleasant and unrewarding when reflecting back on the source of one’s anger but experienced as relatively pleasant and rewarding when looking forward. Section VI synthesizes the evidence into a new portrait of the angry decision maker. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We investigated whether dominance complementarity can lead people to reach mutually beneficial outcomes in negotiations by increasing the likelihood that they will successfully coordinate the exchange of information. We suggest that negotiators who differ in how dominantly they behave in the negotiation exchange information effectively because they fulfill different roles in the negotiation process. Study 1 demonstrated that dominant negotiators generally assert their desires, while relatively submissive negotiators generally ask questions to find ways to satisfy their own desires without escalating conflict with the dominant negotiators. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants were best able to discover integrative agreements when one negotiator was instructed to behave dominantly and the other negotiator, submissively. Improved information exchange mediated the relationship between dominance complementarity and improved joint outcomes in Study 3.

A laboratory study demonstrates that women in high status positions experience emotional ambivalence (simultaneous experience of positive and negative affect) and motivational ambivalence (simultaneous desires to build relationships and display power). These effects were found with 2 different measures of ambivalence, 1 derived from the attitudinal ambivalence literature and the other from the structure of affect literature. These findings have implications about the experience of women in the workplace, as well as the current debates concerning structure of affect.

Making external attributions for negative events, though often considered "self-serving," also implies that the attributor is not in control of critical resources. We hypothesized that making external attributions for negative events will lead to impressions of powerlessness. Because individuals in high-status roles are expected to have power and control, external attributions may violate these role expectations; thus, we further hypothesized that status would moderate the relationship between attributions and interpersonal outcomes. Specifically, more negative impressions and affect will be directed toward high-status individuals who make external attributions than toward their lower status counterparts. Three studies were conducted, one using a role-play methodology, one using an experimentally created hierarchy, and one using vignettes. The results supported our hypotheses: external attributions can be highly disserving for people in high-status positions. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Although power is considered by many to be a fundamental way people organize social relationships, we know little about the psychological experience of being powerful, or the underlying mechanisms through which power affects individuals. In this paper, we review evidence suggesting that power creates a subjective sense of separation and distinctiveness from others, such that high power individuals have more independent self construals than low power individuals. We also review research demonstrating that power is related to the quantity of interconnections with others, such that high power individuals have more interdependent relational structures than low power individuals. We argue that independent self construals and interdependent relational structures occur simultaneously, and mutually reinforce one another. We review current research that acknowledges both dimensions of power, and propose specific mechanisms that underlie the relationship between independent self construal and interdependent relational structures.

The effects of anger, sadness, and happiness on the hostile inferences of aggressive and nonaggressive people were examined. In a cued recall paradigm, anger was associated with more hostile inferences than sadness, happiness, or neutrality in aggressive participants. Anger was not associated with hostile inferences in nonaggressive participants. Measures intended to capture depth of processing were also included. These results, as well as a mediational analysis, suggested that anger affects the hostile inferences of aggressive, but not nonaggressive participants, because people are not sufficiently reflective when angry and thus rely on their chronically accessible explanations. Implications about aggression and the effects of specific emotions on cognitive processing are discussed.

Four studies examined status conferral (decisions about who should be granted status). The studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the 1st study, participants supported President Clinton more when they viewed him expressing anger about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than when they saw him expressing sadness about the scandal. This effect was replicated with an unknown politician in Study 2. The 3rd study showed that status conferral in a company was correlated with peers' ratings of the workers' anger. In the final study, participants assigned a higher status position and a higher salary to a job candidate who described himself as angry as opposed to sad. Furthermore, Studies 2-4 showed that anger expressions created the impression that the expresser was competent and that these perceptions mediated the relationship between emotional expressions and status conferral.

Three vignette studies examined stereotypes of the emotions associated with high-and low-status group members. In Study 1a, participants believed that in negative situations, high-status people feel more angry than sad or guilty and that low-status people feel more sad and guilty than angry. Study 1b showed that in response to positive outcomes, high-status people are expected to feel more pride and low-status people are expected to feel more appreciation. Study 2 showed that people also infer status from emotions: Angry and proud people are thought of as high status, whereas sad, guilty, and appreciative people are considered low status. The authors argue that these emotion stereotypes are due to differences in the inferred abilities of people in high and low positions. These perceptions lead to expectations about agency appraisals and emotions related to agency appraisals. In Study 3, the authors found support for this process by manipulating perceptions of skill and finding the same differences in emotion expectations.

One World War II Jewish ghetto that revolted, the Warsaw Ghetto, is compared to one that did not, the Lodz Ghetto, in order to examine the causes of violent resistance. This structured focused comparative method (George, 1979) illuminates problems with previous explanations for revolt and nonrevolt in Jewish ghettos and suggest psychological variables that might have led to or precluded organized violence. Specifically, it appears that these two ghettos differed in their perceptions about their future. The residents of the Warsaw Ghetto believed they had no hope of survival while residents of the Lodz Ghetto remained optimistic. These differing perceptions seem to have led to the different outcomes. Possible causes of these percetpions are also discussed. Language: en

Diversity of opinions among investors plays a crucial role in models of financial market speculation and bubbles. Yet, little is known about the origins of investor disagreement. Using unique data from China, we identify an important cultural and linguistic factor. We show that investors living in linguistically diverse areas express more diverse opinions on stock message boards and trade stocks more actively. We use geographical isolation of an area due to hilly terrain as an instrument for linguistic diversity. We then discriminate in favor of a differential interpretations mechanism and against slow news diffusion due to language barriers.

We test the hypothesis that the linguistic diversity of a stock’s investor base leads to more trading. Trading might be due to beliefs differing across languages or investor exposure to multiple languages leading to more trading ideas. Using stock message boards from China, which has ten languages, we measure the linguistic diversity of a stock’s investor base using a Herfindahl index of messages posted from different languages. A firm’s diversity increases in the number of languages spoken in the province where it is headquartered. Using the latter as the instrument, trading volume in a stock rises with its linguistic diversity. We then attempt to discriminate among competing mechanisms. We also show using a sample of forty-one countries that countries with more linguistic diversity have greater stock market turnover.

The current research explored the effect of anger on hypothesis confirmation-the propensity to seek information that confirms rather than disconfirms one's opinion. We argued that the moving against action tendency associated with anger leads angry individuals to seek out more disconfirming information than sad individuals, attenuating the confirmation bias. We tested this hypothesis in two studies of experimentally primed anger and sadness on the selective exposure to hypothesis confirming and disconfirming information. In Study 1, participants in the angry condition were more likely to choose disconfirming information than those in the sad or neutral condition when given the opportunity to read more about a social debate, and reading the disconfirming information affected their subsequent attitude. Study 2 measured participants' opinions and information selection about the 2008 US Presidential Election and their desire to "move against" a person or object. Participants in the angry condition reported a greater tendency to oppose a person or object, which resulted in the attenuation of the confirmation bias.

1 What is An Organization? 2 Organizational Homogeneity 3 Organizational Hierarchy 4 Homogeneity and Hierarchy are Mutually Reinforcing 5 Performance Implications of Organizing Preferences 6 Summary

In keeping with the handbook format, this chapter identifies four types of methods in the behavioral decision-making literature for detecting the influence of anger on judgments and choices. The types of methods include inferring the presence of anger from behavior, measuring naturally occurring anger or individual differences in anger, manipulating anger, and both measuring and manipulating anger. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method and present evidence showing that the effects of anger often differ from those of other negative emotions. The chapter also introduces an overarching appraisal-tendency framework for predicting such effects and connects the framework to broader theories and associated mechanisms. Finally, we examine whether anger should be considered a positive emotion and propose that anger is experienced as pleasant when one is looking forward and unpleasant when one is reflecting back on the anger’s source.

People’s causal attributions for events in their lives have been shown to relate to individual and interpersonal outcomes. Groups and organizations also make causal attributions, and this article examines whether their publicly communicated attributions predict organizational-level outcomes. By content analyzing attributions contained in corporate annual reports from 14 companies during a 21-year period, the authors found that organizations that made “self disserving” attributions— internal and controllable attributions for negative events—had higher stock prices 1 year later. The authors argue that claiming personal responsibility for negative events made the organizations appear more in control, leading to more positive impressions.

The human tendency toward homogeneity is a cornerstone of social psychology. Classic studies going back to at least Asch (1955, 1956) and Sherif (1936) suggest that, when interacting with others, variance in human thought and action disappears as people conform to other group members and group norms. Convergence is considered to be a primary consequence of social interaction and group life. In fact, group life often becomes synonymous with uniformity and conformity among members. So, it is not surprising that research on emotion as a group-level construct focuses on homogeneity and on the mechanisms that propel group members to share emotional reactions (see Anderson & Keltner, this volume; Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Bartel & Saavedra, 2000; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994; Hatfield & Rapson, this volume). Although group dynamics researchers have documented powerful pressures that drive out variance, variance within groups has also been a persistent, if less frequent, theme as well (Cartwright & Zander, 1960; Schein, 1965). Groups do not transform members into clones: Variance persists in even the most homogenous groups, and such variation can have important consequences. Some modern research on group cognition does imply the value of examining variation in groups. The widely studied notion of transactive memory, for example, is predicated on the heterogeneity of information held by group members – that group members know and remember different things (e.g., Liang, Moreland, & Argote, 1995; Moreland, 1999; Wegner, 1986).

Introduction: a world of emotion Part I. The Interpersonal Context: 1. Empathy: negotiating the border between self and other Mark Davis 2. Envy and its transmutations Richard H. Smith 3. The bond threat sequence: discourse evidence for the systematic interdependence of shame and social relationships David S. Fearon Jr. 4. Emotion as adaptive interpersonal communication: the case of embarrassment Rowland S. Miller 5. Does expressing emotion promote well-being? It depends on relationship context Margaret S. Clark and Eli J. Finkel Part II. The Intra-Group Context: 6. Emotional contagion: religious and ethnic hatreds and global terrorism Elaine Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson 7. The emotional convergence hypothesis: implications for individuals, relationships, and cultures Cameron Anderson and Dacher Keltner 8. Emotional variation within work groups: causes and performance sequences Larissa Z. Tiedens, Robert I. Sutton and Christina T. Fong 9. Inside the heart of emotion: on culture and relational concerns Patricia M. Rodriguez Mosquera, Agneta H. Fischer and Antony S. R. Manstead 10. Objectification theory and emotions: a feminist psychological perspective on gendered affect Laura B. Citrin, Tomi-Ann Roberts and Barbara Fredrickson Part III. The Inter-Group Context: 11. Intergroup emotions: emotions as an intergroup phenomenon Diane M. Mackie, Lisa A. Silver and Eliot R. Smith 12. Intergroup contact and the central role of affect in intergroup prejudice Linda R. Tropp and Thomas F. Pettigrew 13. Judgements of deserving and the emotional consequences of stigmatization Cheryl R. Kaiser and Brenda Major 14. Group based emotions and intergroup behavior: the case of relative deprivation Heather J. Smith and Thomas Kessler 15. Interpreting ingroup's negative actions toward another group: emotional reactions to appraised harm Nyla R. Branscombe and Anca M. Miron 16. Intergroup schadenfreude: conditions and consequences Russel Spears and Colin Wayne Leach.

Two studies examine complementarity (vs. mimicry) of dominant and submissive nonverbal behaviors. In the first study, participants interacted with a confederate who displayed either dominance (through postural expansion) or submission (through postural constriction). On average, participants exposed to a dominant confederate decreased their postural stance, whereas participants exposed to a submissive confederate increased their stance. Further, participants with complementing responses (dominance in response to submission and submission in response to dominance) liked their partner more and were more comfortable than those who mimicked. In the second study, complementarity and mimicry were manipulated, and complementarity resulted in more liking and comfort than mimicry. The findings speak to the likelihood of hierarchical differentiation.

Previous research suggests that women are disliked (compared to men) when they display dominance as leaders. A closer look, however, reveals ambiguity about the specific forms of dominance proscrib...

Relationships are a ubiquitous and important feature of organizational and social life. Ample previous work has demonstrated that people desire relationships that are egalitarian. However, other work has shown that people also hold a strong preference for hierarchical relationships, which emerges rapidly during interactions. These two relationship motivations are seemingly incompatible, and yet they are similarly strong and common; how do people navigate this tension? We suggest that an important way in which individuals satisfy these two competing motivations is by engaging in dominance flux, or alternating who occupies the dominant position and the subordinate position in a relationship. Across two studies, we find that individuals can and do engage in dominance flux in response to an interaction partner’s behaviors. Study 1 demonstrates that individuals perceive pre- existing relationships to be more equal and satisfying when they are marked by intensions to flux. Study 2 shows that flux relationships ...