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Anger at Work
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Description: What happens when you express anger at work? A large body of work suggests that workers who express anger are judged to be competent and high status, and as a result are rewarded with more status, power, and money. We revisit these claims in four pre-registered, well-powered studies, using the same methods used in previous work. Our findings consistently run counter to current received wisdom regarding anger's positive role for obtaining status and power at the workplace. We find that when workers express anger they are accorded with less competence, and that they are sometimes inferred as being high power and sometimes not. Importantly, we find that angry workers are penalized and given less status compared with sad or emotionless workers. We explore the reasons for these findings both experimentally and descriptively and find that anger connotes less competence and warmth, and that anger expressions at work are perceived as inappropriate, an overreaction, and signal a lack of self-control. Moreover, we find negative attitudes toward workplace anger expressions, such that people find it relatively more harmful, foolish, and worthless. When we further explored beliefs about what expressing anger (vs. sadness) can accomplish at work, we find that promoting one's status isn't one of them.