Dimensions of Leader Anger Expression Unveiled: How Anger Intensity and Gender of Leader and Observer Affect Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness and Status Conferral

Abstract

While significant organizational research evaluates effective leadership traits and decades of psychological research have investigated emotion, there is a lack of consensus in organizational behavior research related to whether emotion expressed by a leader elicits positive or negative outcomes. We seek to augment existing research by exploring the effect of three dimensions, namely, the intensity of anger expressed, the gender of the leader, and the gender of the observer on perceptions of leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. In Study 1, we recruited 40 participants from a well-known U.S. university to select appropriate terms attributable to intense, moderate, and neutral levels of anger expression. In Study 2, we recruited a diverse pool of 296 participants and employed a quasi-experimental method by randomly assigning participants into one of the six conditions created by three levels of anger expression intensity and the leader gender. Participants were asked to read a vignette in which a male or a female leader responds to an anger-provoking situation with different levels of anger expression and evaluate the leader on perceived leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. Our study findings demonstrated that a leader demonstrating no anger was perceived higher in leadership effectiveness than a leader showing either moderate or intense anger. Juxtaposed to these results, for future status conferral, a leader expressing no anger was perceived as higher in future status than a leader expressing moderate anger without significant difference found between no anger and intense anger. We also found a significant main effect of observer gender with female participants giving lower ratings for leadership effectiveness and status conferral than male participants. Possible explanations and practical implications regarding gender-specific findings are discussed.

Greta Thunberg and the Generation of Moral Authority: A Systematic Literature Review on the Characteristics of Thunberg’s Leadership

“…Courage is a universal trait among moral authorities [8,[29][30][31]. According to Dongwon et al [84], leaders display courage when they challenge the authorities and established power centers. Covey [31] describes courage as a vital element in gaining moral authority.…”

“…Use the anger to act without violence" [68]. Dongwon et al [84] seem to agree with Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that anger should target action rather than people. Conversely, the findings show that Thunberg directs her anger mainly toward people and only occasionally toward actions [14,17,25,26,64].…”

“…Anger from female leaders has been suggested to lack efficacy compared with anger from male leaders [29,59,68,83]. Dongwon et al [84] studied leadership, courage, and anger. They found that when men in leadership positions displayed focused anger regarding a shared cause, people responded with commitment and trust.…”

“…They found that when men in leadership positions displayed focused anger regarding a shared cause, people responded with commitment and trust. When women, on the other hand, showed focused anger, they were accused of being overemotional, untrustworthy, and insecure [84]. Overall, however, Thunberg's anger has evoked a positive response among her followers and could well be a source of her moral authority [48,54,55,63,75,77].…”

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“…Researchers used the following approaches in area of leader's identity: gender and leader's effectiveness (Collica-Cox & Schulz, 2020; Ko et al, 2015;Rhee & Sigler, 2015), gender and the pursuit of innovation opportunities (Reutzel et al, 2018), gender and leadership style (Bornman, 2019;Brands et al, 2015;Rhee & Sigler, 2015), gender and communication style (Violanti & Jurczak, 2011), gender and errors/mistakes (Thoroughgood et al, 2013), gender and external audience response to organizational failures (Montgomery & Cowen, 2020), gender and stereotypes and prejudices (Parker et al, 2020;Rhee & Sigler, 2015;Saint-Michel, 2018), gender and looking for help (Rosette et al, 2015), gender and narcissism (Chen, 2018), gender and leader's behavior and emotions (Schreiner et al, 2018;Yun et al, 2020), gender and behavioural integrity (Gatling et al, 2020), gender and personal and professional identity transitions (Meister et al, 2017), gender and conflict (Veldman et al, 2017). The tests were made in particular industries, e.g., film (Parker et al, 2020), non-profit organization (Schreiner et al, 2018), police (Veldman et al, 2017), political parties (Butler & Preece, 2016), restaurant (Gatling et al, 2020), university (Herbst, 2020;Yun et al, 2020), or in a cross-industrial manner (Chen, 2018;Collica-Cox & Schulz, 2020;Ko et al, 2015;Saint-Michel, 2018). We should also underline that perception of a leader's identity is investigated by the analysis of followers (Schreiner et al, 2018;Thoroughgood et al, 2013), by the perception by other leaders…”