The influence of power and solidarity on emotional display rules at work

Transcription

1 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: DOI /s ORIGINAL PAPER The influence of power and solidarity on emotional display rules at work James Diefendorff Josh Morehart Allison Gabriel Published online: 5 May 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract This study examined the influence of two interpersonal relationship dimensions, relative power and solidarity (closeness), on the emotional display rules that employees report they would adopt in work situations in which they felt happiness or anger. Results demonstrated that display rules involved more control over emotional expressions (i.e., more deamplification and masking of emotion and less expressing and amplification of emotion) when the interaction partner had higher relative power compared to when the interaction partner had equal or lower relative power. This pattern of results was present for both happiness and anger, though the effects were larger for anger. Display rules also involved more control when the interaction partner was low in solidarity compared to when the interaction partner was high in solidarity, with this effect being similar in magnitude for anger and happiness. Keywords Affect Emotional display rules Power Solidarity Ekman and Friesen (1975) described emotional display rules as indicating the need to manage the appearance of particular emotions in particular situations (p. 137). As such, display rules represent the conventions about the appropriateness of emotional displays in social situations (Matsumoto 1990). Matsumoto et al. (2005) recently demonstrated that display rules vary across a wide range of social situations. In organizational research, emotional display rules are often described as job requirements aimed J. Diefendorff (&) J. Morehart A. Gabriel University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA jdiefen@uakron.edu at constraining and standardizing emotional expressions so as to meet broader organizational goals (Grandey 2000; Rafaeli and Sutton 1987). Display rule perceptions at work have been shown to predict job attitudes, emotional displays, and the reporting of physical symptoms (Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Diefendorff et al. 2006; Grandey 2003; Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). Additionally, research has shown that display rule perceptions are influenced by a variety of factors, including demographics, personality, dispositional affect, supervisor expectations, and pace of the work (Brotheridge and Lee 2003; Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Diefendorff et al. 2006; Gosserand and Diefendorff 2005; Rafaeli and Sutton 1990; Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). While organizational research has typically treated display rules as expectations that should be followed across interpersonal interactions (e.g., Brotheridge and Grandey 2002; Diefendorff et al. 2006), recent research has shown that display rules at work vary as a function of the work target with whom the person is interacting (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009). For instance, Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) found that display rules for interacting with coworkers involved less control over emotional expressions than display rules for interacting with supervisors and subordinates, while display rules for customer interactions involved the most control over expressions. Diefendorff and Richard (2008) argued that flexibly matching display rules to different social situations may facilitate interpersonal effectiveness and the attainment of a variety of organizational goals (e.g., providing good customer service, managing others effectively, working well in a team context). While the work of Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) illustrated that display rules differ across work targets, it did not explain why these differences occurred. Drawing

2 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: from research on social relations (Hall et al. 2005; Locke 2003), we propose that the two interpersonal dimensions of relative power and solidarity (i.e., closeness) may underlie the differences in display rules across interaction partners at work. The current study tests these ideas with regard to two prototypical workplace emotions, anger and happiness, as well as a more complete set of expression management techniques than has been used in the vast majority of organizational research (Brotheridge and Grandey 2002; Diefendorff and Richard 2003). Display rules Ekman and Friesen (1969) first coined the term display rules in their cross-cultural research on emotional displays. This early work revealed that individuals modify their facial expressions as a function of their immediate social situations. Matsumoto et al. (1998) suggested that all facial displays are the result of biologically innate, universal expressions and culturally learned rules for expression management (p. 148). In organizational research, display rules represent the emotions employees are expected to show as part of their work role (Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Rafaeli and Sutton 1989). From this perspective, the purpose of display rules is to constrain employee emotional expressions so as to facilitate the achievement of organizational goals (Diefendorff and Richard 2003). However, much of this research has implicitly assumed that display rules at work require that emotions be displayed in the same way across interpersonal situations (e.g., Diefendorff et al. 2006) so that there is less variability and greater consistency in emotional expressions. Thus, display rules are a way to standardize and make predictable the emotional content of interpersonal interactions at work (Van Maanen and Kunda 1989). However, a competing perspective implies that variation in emotional displays across social contexts may be more adaptive (Fridlund 1997). Consistent with this idea, a program of research by Matsumoto and colleagues (e.g., Matsumoto 1990; Matsumoto et al. 1998, 2005, 2008) has shown that display rules vary as a function of the felt emotion involved (e.g., anger, fear, contempt, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise) and the particular interpersonal context considered by participants (e.g., with family members, acquaintances, children, father, mother, brother, male friend, and female acquaintance to name a few). Building on this work, Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) demonstrated that employee display rules differed across emotions and organizational targets (e.g., customer, supervisor, coworker, and subordinate). Matsumoto et al. (2005) and Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) demonstrated that display rules involve more than simply expressing or hiding emotions, as implied by past organizational research (Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). Indeed, both studies reported that display rules varied as a function of six expression management strategies (e.g., Ekman and Friesen 1975), each of which represents a distinct way of modifying emotional expressions. These expression management strategies were amplify (i.e., express more emotion than is felt), express (i.e., show emotion as felt), qualify (i.e., show the emotion as felt, but add a smile so as to comment on it), deamplify (i.e., express less emotion than is felt), neutralize (i.e., show no emotion), and mask (i.e., show none of the emotion and cover it with a smile). In the present investigation, we focused on display rules using each of these expression management strategies for the discrete emotions of anger and happiness. These emotions have been shown to be universally-expressed and recognized across cultures (Ekman 1993). Further, anger and happiness commonly occur at work (Basch and Fisher 2000) and employees and their supervisors typically expect employees to express positive emotions and suppress negative emotions as part of the work role (Diefendorff et al. 2006). While the meanings of display rules to amplify, express, deamplify, and neutralize anger and happiness are relatively straightforward, display rules to qualify and mask anger and happiness deserve more explanation as both of these expression management strategies involve the use of a contrived smile. A display rule to qualify anger means that anger is shown with the addition of a smile as to tell the interaction partner something about the emotion (e.g., I am angry, but I will not act on it ). In contrast, a display rule to mask anger suggests that the person shows no anger and only smiles instead. Similarly, a display rule to qualify happiness means the person shows happiness, but adds a smile to say something about the feeling. While it is true that a smile often accompanies the natural display of happiness (Ekman 1993), research has identified many situations in which happiness and smiling do not co-occur (i.e., individuals can feel happy and not smile and can smile when not happy; Fridlund 1997). Thus, a display rule to add a smile to a happiness display may mean that the actor wishes to unambiguously convey the positive feeling to others (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009). Finally, a display rule to mask happiness suggests that the person covers his/ her happiness with a smile. Given that the act of smiling may not be a very effective strategy for hiding one s happiness, we did not expect that this display rule would be frequently endorsed, but rather examined it for exploratory purposes. For instance, there may be certain forms of socially inappropriate happiness (e.g., pride, schadenfreude, amusement) that individuals may attempt to cover with a bland social smile, leading individuals to endorse this display rule.

3 122 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) reported that the most common display rules for happiness involved expressing and deamplifying (i.e., partially suppressing or showing less emotion than is felt) the emotion, whereas masking and neutralizing were the least common. They theorized that happiness may be frequently deamplified in organizational contexts because such high activation positive affect may go against norms for control, rationality, and professionalism (Ashforth and Ronald 1993). Rather, the desired display at work may be a less activated positive emotion, such as enthusiasm or optimism. Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) reported that the most common display rules for anger involved deamplifying and neutralizing (i.e., completely suppressing or showing no feeling) the emotion, whereas amplifying, expressing, and masking were the least common. However, they also found that display rules for anger and happiness depended on the work target involved. For instance, the display rule for anger was more likely to involve neutralizing when the target was a customer compared to when the target was a coworker. While such between-target differences are interesting, it is not clear from this prior work why display rules differed across interaction partners. Diefendorff and Richard (2008) theorized that the horizontal (closeness/ solidarity) and vertical (relative power) dimensions of relationships (e.g., Hall et al. 2005) may explain display rule differences across work targets. Power, solidarity, and emotional display rules Interpersonal relationships have been described as varying along both vertical and horizontal dimensions (e.g., Brown 1965; Hall et al. 2005; Locke 2003). The vertical dimension of relationships refers to the power or status differences between individuals (Hall et al. 2005). If one person has higher relative power than another it suggests that he or she controls more resources and can exert more influence on the other person. The horizontal, or solidarity, dimension refers to the degree of interpersonal closeness between individuals and is a function of factors such as perceived similarity, liking, and time spent together. Interaction partners who are high in solidarity often share a common characteristic, such as age, beliefs, background, attitudes, or experiences (Locke 2003). These two relationship dimensions are believed to impact a variety of interpersonal perceptions and behaviors (Locke 2003). Relative power Gibson and Schroeder (2002) theorized that relative power shapes the freedom with which employees express their emotions. In particular, employees are thought to modify their expressions more when interacting with higher power targets compared to lower power targets. In considering the strategic nature of emotional displays, Gibson and Schroeder (2002) argued that knowing that emotional displays signal levels of power, agents will be motivated to align their displays of emotion with their perceived level of power (p. 197). Consistent with this idea, Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) found that display rules for interacting with coworkers were most likely to involve deamplifying negative emotions, whereas display rules for interacting with supervisors and customers were more likely to involve neutralizing. Similarly, Goodsell (1976) reported that postal clerks were more courteous to higher status customers compared to lower status customers, and Matsumoto (1990) found that the display of negative emotions was rated as more appropriate when the target was of lower status compared to when the target was of higher status. A limitation of these prior works is that they did not include an equal status target, preventing a determination of whether these effects are due to differences in hierarchy in both directions (i.e., display rules vary across all three relative power levels) or just one direction (e.g., display rules for higher power targets are different from display rules for other targets). Furthermore, although the relative power of interaction partners may have influenced display rules in these prior studies, this variable was not directly manipulated or measured, making it impossible to tell whether power or some other difference between targets led to the results. Based on prior theory (Hall et al. 2005) and empirical work (Matsumoto 1990), we expected that when employees considered targets of higher relative power they would be more likely to adopt display rules involving greater control (i.e., neutralize, mask, deamplify) and less expression of felt emotions (i.e., express, amplify, qualify). In contrast, when employees considered targets of lower relative power, we anticipated that display rules would exhibit the opposite pattern (i.e., less control and more expression of emotions). Further, we expected display rules for equal power targets to fall in-between higher and lower power targets. Unlike prior work on this topic, inclusion of an equal power target in our design gives us a baseline against which to compare the effects of both higher and lower relative power. Hypothesis 1 Relative power has a main effect on emotional display rules, such that there is the most control over emotional expressions (i.e., more neutralizing, masking, and deamplifying, and less amplifying, expressing, and qualifying) for higher relative power targets, followed by equal relative power targets, and then lower relative power targets.

4 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: Solidarity Interaction partners who are high in solidarity like each other and feel psychologically close. As a result, individuals may exert less control over their emotions when interacting with high solidarity targets compared to low solidarity targets (Gibson and Schroeder 2002). Supporting this view, Matsumoto et al. (2005) and Matsumoto (1990) found that display rules for targets with whom an actor would presumably have close relationships (i.e., family, friends) were more likely to involve expressing felt emotions, whereas display rules for targets with whom the actor would likely not have close relationships (i.e., strangers, casual acquaintances) were more likely to involve masking emotions. In other words, display rules were more likely to involve expressing genuine emotions when interaction partners were interpersonally close, possibly because of a greater investment in maintaining close relationships and being emotionally honest with the person (Matsumoto 1990). While the interaction targets examined in Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) seemed to fall along a continuum of relative power (customer, supervisor, coworker, subordinate), they found that display rules for coworker interactions had the least amount of control over emotions, even compared to lower power subordinates. They theorized that coworker targets differed not only in relative power, but also in interpersonal closeness, with coworkers being closer than the other targets examined. Consistent with these ideas, we propose that display rules will involve more control over emotions when the target is low in solidarity compared to when the target is high in solidarity. Hypothesis 2 Solidarity has a main effect on emotional display rules, such that there is more control over displays (i.e., more neutralizing, masking, and deamplifying, and less amplifying, expressing, and qualifying) for low solidarity targets compared to high solidarity targets. The role of emotion: Happiness versus anger Though we expected to replicate the finding of differences in display rules for happiness and anger (e.g., amplifying happiness will be more common than amplifying anger; Diefendorff and Greguras 2009; Matsumoto et al. 2005), we also anticipated that the magnitude of the effects of relative power and solidarity on display rules would be larger for anger than for happiness. Expressions of happiness increase liking of the actor (Gibson and Schroeder 2002), bring interaction partners closer together (Wharton and Erickson 1993), and facilitate a variety of interpersonal processes (Elfenbein 2007). As a result, display rules for happiness may be more consistent across targets and less influenced by relative power and solidarity levels of the interaction partners. In contrast, anger expressions create distance between interaction partners (Wharton and Erickson 1993), thus decreasing liking of the actor, while at the same time enhancing perceptions of competence and power (Tiedens 2001). However, this status conferral may be more likely to occur when the target is of equal or lower relative power than the actor, compared to when the target is of higher relative power. As argued by Hess et al. (2005), for an anger display to be perceived as legitimate, the expresser has to have the power to address the anger eliciting event successfully (p. 516), a circumstance that may be more likely with equal or lower relative power targets than with higher relative power targets. Indeed, anger displays in the presence of higher power targets may invite strong negative reactions and possible retaliation (Gibson and Schroeder 2002). Similarly, showing anger to low solidarity targets may be more damaging for the relationship than showing it to high solidarity targets in which openness and emotional honesty may have more value. Thus, anger display rules may depend more on target characteristics than happiness display rules. Supporting these ideas, Matsumoto (1990) reported a significant effect of relative power (i.e., higher vs. lower status) on display rules for anger, but not for happiness. Comparing in-group and out-group targets (who presumably differ in solidarity), Matsumoto (1990) found between-target differences in the display rules for both happiness and anger, but reported that the effects for anger were nearly five times larger than the effects for happiness. Similarly, while Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) found significant effects for display rules for happiness and negative emotion (including anger) across targets, the effect sizes were much larger for negative emotions than for happiness. Thus, the following predictions about the interactions of emotion and the relationship dimensions are made. Hypothesis 3 Emotion (happiness vs. anger) interacts with (a) relative power and (b) solidarity to impact display rules, with the effects of relative power and solidarity being larger for anger than for happiness. Finally, we explored whether power and solidarity combine to influence display rules. It is unclear a priori whether the effects of relative power and solidarity will be relatively independent and additive (i.e., each uniquely contributing to display rules), or whether their effects will be multiplicative with the impact of one dimension depending on the level of the other dimension. For instance, while Matsumoto (1990) found that the effect of in-group versus out-group on display rules was larger than the effect of status, these relationship characteristics were not fully crossed preventing a direct comparison of their main or interactive effects. Further, there is little in the way of theory to support one form of an interaction (e.g., that

5 124 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: the effect of one dimension will vary as a function of the other dimension). As such, we do not hypothesize an interaction effect, but rather explore such effects in the data (along with a three-way interaction between power, solidarity, and emotion). Method Participants One hundred and sixty-four employed students working in sales and service jobs from a large Midwestern university participated in this study. One hundred and thirty participants (79.3%) indicated that they could realistically imagine a person from each of the six interpersonal relationship conditions (see the manipulation check section for more details), indicating that each condition of the study was meaningful to participants. The resulting sample was 21.5% male and 83.1% Caucasian, 8.5% African American, 3.8% Hispanic, and 4.5% other races. The mean age was 20.6 years with the average work week being 22.8 hours and the average tenure at the company being 23.8 months. Participants completed the surveys on their own time and returned them to the researchers. Participants were awarded extra course credit. Stimuli and experimental design This study used a 2 (solidarity) 9 3 (relative power) 9 2 (emotion) within-subjects experimental design, with six expression management strategies (amplify, express, deamplify, neutralize, mask, qualify) serving as the display rule dependent variables. As with prior display rule research (e.g., Diefendorff and Greguras 2009; Matsumoto 1990; Matsumoto et al. 2005; Matsumoto et al. 1998) written descriptions of targets were used as stimuli. The relative power (lower, equal, and higher) and solidarity (high and low) dimensions were fully crossed to create 6 interaction partner descriptions. A sample target description is presented below: Equal Power, High Closeness. By equal power and high closeness, we mean an individual at work who has power, control, influence, and decision making authority equal to your own, and is someone whom you like, feel psychologically close with, or share common interests, goals, and values; for instance, a coworker whom you like and share a friendly relationship. The presentation order of the six target descriptions was counterbalanced. For each of the six target descriptions, participants were asked to imagine that they were interacting with the target person and feeling the emotions of anger and (in a separate situation) happiness. Consistent with Matsumoto et al. (2005), anger was defined for participants as A feeling of displeasure resulting from injury, mistreatment, opposition, and usually showing itself in a desire to fight back at the supposed cause of this feeling, and happiness was defined as Having a feeling of great pleasure, contentment, joy. It is important to note that we did not specify a particular event or source of each emotion, but rather had participants start with assumption that they were feeling the emotions, as defined above. Thus, it was not necessary for participants to imagine a specific scenario when responding to the display rule items. While it is possible that some participants did so, we expected any imagined events would represent random error as individuals would almost certainly imagine different events. After reading each interaction partner scenario, participants completed the display rule measure for both happiness and anger. Measures Manipulation check For each of the interaction partner descriptions, participants were asked to indicate whether they could realistically imagine a person who fits this description on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree ). In an attempt to be conservative with regard to including individuals for whom the experimental manipulations were most realistic, we excluded from analysis participants who indicated that they could not imagine all six of the interaction partners (i.e., they disagreed that they could imagine one or more of the targets). This resulted in the removal of 34 individuals (20.7% of the sample), with 26 of these individuals being removed because they could not realistically imagine a lower relative power individual in their work situation. 1 Such a finding makes sense given the young age of the sample and the high likelihood that they work in entry level positions. Emotional display rules Emotional display rules were measured using a modified version of Matsumoto et al. s (2005) Display Rule Assessment Inventory (DRAI). The original DRAI required individuals to select one of the six expression management strategies as a way to assess display rules. However, this approach makes the untested assumption that expression 1 Dropping these individuals did not have a large effect on the results, though the average effect size increased by about.01 across the various tests.

6 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: management strategies are mutually exclusive and cannot be employed together in an interpersonal interaction (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009). As such, we modified the DRAI so that each of the six expression management strategies was rated on a separate scale for each interpersonal interaction description. After reading the description of the target, participants read the following stem When I feel (Angry or Happy) in the presence of this person, I followed by the six expression management strategies: (a) express my feelings with no inhibitions, (b) express my feelings, but with less intensity than my true feelings, (c) express my feelings, but with more intensity than my true feelings, (d) remain neutral and express nothing, (e) express my feelings, but together with a smile to qualify my feelings, (f) smile only, with no trace of anything else, in order to hide my true feelings. Thus, the stem of the question was the same for happiness and for anger. The response scale was as follows: 1 = Very Unlikely, 2 = Unlikely, 3 = Somewhat Unlikely, 4 = Somewhat Likely, 5 = Likely, 6 = Very Likely. Results As a first step, we examined whether the six expression management strategies might be reduced to a smaller set of strategies using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). For instance, arguments could be made that neutralize and mask represent the same general strategy of concealment, or that amplify and express represent a general strategy of showing feelings. Interestingly, the factor structure that emerged differed across the 12 scenarios (six interaction partner descriptions 9 2 emotions), suggesting that the ways expression management strategies grouped together varied across situations. Further, an EFA conducted on responses for all 12 scenarios did not yield a meaningful solution (these analyses are available from the first author). These results suggest that the expression management strategies did not form a consistent structure across the various scenarios and may be best treated as distinct strategies rather than as indicators of a smaller set of more general strategies. This finding is consistent with the fact that different attempts to consolidate these expression management strategies have yielded different solutions depending on the nature of the DRAI responses used and the specific analyses performed (e.g., Matsumoto et al. 1998, 2005, 2008). Consistent with Diefendorff and Greguras (2009), we tested our hypotheses separately for each of the six expression management strategies. Relative power main effects As can be seen in Table 1, there was a significant main effect for power on display rules for five out of six expression management strategies (no power main effect was observed for qualifying one s emotional expression). Post hoc tests (see Table 2) showed a pattern of results partially consistent with Hypothesis 1 for all expression management strategies except qualify and neutralize: display rules involved greater control over expressions (i.e., more deamplifying and masking, less expressing and amplifying) for higher relative power targets compared to display rules for equal and lower relative power targets, which did not differ from each other. The finding of no differences between equal and lower relative power targets was not expected given previous theory suggesting that having more power than one s interaction partner may result in less control over felt emotions (Gibson and Schroeder 2002). Solidarity main effects As can be seen in Table 1, there was a significant main effect for solidarity on all six expression management strategies. Consistent with Hypothesis 2, follow-up tests (see Table 3) revealed that display rules in the high solidarity condition were more likely to involve expressing, Table 1 Effect sizes from repeated measures ANOVAs for each of the expression management strategies Source DF Partial g 2 Express Amplify Qualify Deamplify Neutralize Mask Power 2, ***.147*** ***.029*.085*** Solidarity 1, ***.183***.085***.097***.447***.235*** Emotion 1, ***.166***.256***.081***.191***.005 Power 9 Solidarity 2, *** Power 9 Emotion 2, ***.063*** * Solidarity 9 Emotion 1, *** * Power 9 Solidarity 9 Emotion 2, * *p \.05, **p \.01, ***p \.001

7 126 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: Table 2 Means for each strategy across levels of relative power Relative power Higher (A) Equal (B) Lower (C) Table 4 Means for each strategy across emotions Emotion Happiness (A) Anger (B) Express 3.51 bc 4.02 a 3.95 a Amplify 2.70 bc 3.12 a 3.02 a Qualify Deamplify 3.63 bc 3.27 a 3.27 a Neutralize Mask 2.93 bc 2.65 a 2.61 a Note: Superscript indicates when values in two columns are significantly different from each other at p \.05 using post hoc comparisons with Bonferroni corrections Express 4.14 b 3.51 a Amplify 3.13 b 2.77 a Qualify 3.93 b 3.30 a Deamplify 3.28 b 3.51 a Neutralize 2.68 b 3.00 a Mask Note: Superscript indicates when values in two columns are significantly different from each other at p \.05. Note that no Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied because only one comparison of means was made per row Table 3 Means for each strategy across levels of solidarity amplifying, and qualifying, and less likely to involve deamplifying, neutralizing, and masking, compared to display rules in the low solidarity condition. Thus, when interacting with targets of low closeness, display rules involved greater control over emotions in comparison to display rules with targets of high closeness. These findings are consistent with previous display rule research (e.g., Matsumoto et al. 2005; Matsumoto 1990). The role of emotion Solidarity High solidarity (A) Low solidarity (B) Express 4.18 b 3.48 a Amplify 3.13 b 2.76 a Qualify 3.73 b 3.50 a Deamplify 3.26 b 3.53 a Neutralize 2.46 b 3.22 a Mask 2.48 b 2.99 a Note: Superscript indicates when values in two columns are significantly different from each other at p \.05. Note that no Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied because only one comparison of means was made per row Consistent with past research (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009; Matsumoto et al. 2005), emotion had a significant main effect for five out of six expression management strategies (see Table 1). Examination of the means revealed that display rules for happiness involved less control than display rules for anger (i.e., more expressing, amplifying, and qualifying and less deamplifying and neutralizing; see Table 4). Masking was the only strategy that did not exhibit significant differences between emotions. Power 9 Emotion interactions Consistent with Hypothesis 3a, relative power and emotion interacted to shape display rules for the strategies of amplify, express, and deamplify (see Table 1). Specifically, the effect of relative power on display rules for each of these expression management strategies was larger for anger [amplify: F (2, 258) = 26.38, p \.001, partial g 2 =.170; express: F (2, 258) = 30.33, p \.001, partial g 2 =.190; deamplify: F (2, 258) = 16.10, p \.001, partial g 2 =.111] than for happiness [amplify: F (2, 258) = 4.56, p \.05, partial g 2 =.034; express: F (2, 258) = 4.02, p \.05, partial g 2 =.030; deamplify: F (2, 258) = 4.02, p \.05, partial g 2 =.030]. As shown in Fig. 1, display rules to amplify anger were much less likely when considering higher relative power targets compared to equal and lower relative power targets (the pattern of results for express was quite similar). Additionally, as shown in Fig. 2, the effect of relative power on display rules to deamplify emotions was greater for anger than for happiness, with the largest difference being between higher relative power and both equal and lower relative power targets. While similar patterns were observed for the emotion of happiness, the effect of relative power was smaller. Hypothesis 3a was not supported for qualify, neutralize, and mask as there was no interaction between emotion and power. Solidarity 9 emotion interactions Solidarity interacted with emotion to predict display rules to deamplify and mask emotions (see Table 1). For deamplify, the effect of solidarity was significant for happiness (F (1, 129) = 28.17, p \.001, partial g 2 =.179), but not for anger (F (1, 129) = 1.57, n.s.), with display rules to deamplify happiness being more strongly endorsed for low closeness targets compared to high closeness targets (see

8 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: Fig. 1 Interaction between power and emotion for the expression management strategy of Amplify Fig. 4 Interaction between solidarity and emotion for the expression management strategy of Mask Fig. 2 Interaction between power and emotion for the expression management strategy of Deamplify Fig. 5 Three-way interactions between power, solidarity, and emotion for the expression management strategy of Express Exploratory interactions Fig. 3 Interaction between solidarity and emotion for the expression management strategy of Deamplify Fig. 3). This pattern of results is counter to Hypothesis 3b. For masking, the effect of solidarity was larger for anger (F (1, 129) = 46.08, p \.001, partial g 2 =.263) than for happiness (F (1, 129) = 21.22, p \.001, partial g 2 =.141), with display rules to mask anger being more strongly endorsed for low closeness targets than for high closeness targets (see Fig. 4), consistent with Hypothesis 3b. However, this hypothesis was not supported for any of the other expression management strategies. A significant interaction between power and solidarity was found for display rules to express emotions, but not for other display rules (see Table 1). Follow-up tests revealed that the difference in express display rules between power levels was greater at low levels of solidarity (F (2, 258) = 24.53, p \.001, partial g 2 =.160) than it was at high levels of solidarity (F (2, 258) = 7.50, p \.01, partial g 2 =.055), though it was significant in both cases. Interestingly, this interaction was further qualified by a significant three way interaction with emotion (see Table 1). As shown in Fig. 5, the effect of relative power on display rules to express emotions was largest at low levels of solidarity and when feeling anger (F (2,

9 128 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: ) = 28.75, p \.001, partial g 2 =.182), and smallest at high levels of solidarity and when feeling happy (F (2, 258) =.37, n.s.). While there were significant power effects when solidarity was high and when feeling anger (F (2, 258) = 13.62, p \.001, partial g 2 =.096) as well as when solidarity was low and when feeling happy (F (2, 258) = 5.67, p \.01, partial g 2 =.042), they were of much smaller magnitude than when solidarity was low and when feeling anger. Figure 5 demonstrates that individuals were much less likely to report adopting a display rule to freely express their emotions when the emotion was anger and they were interacting with higher power individuals with whom they were not close, compared to the other social situations (e.g., feeling happiness while interacting with a lower power, low closeness target). Discussion Prior work (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009) established that emotional display rules at work vary as a function of the person with whom one is interacting. In an attempt to explain these differences, we systematically examined how the relative power and solidarity of interaction partners shapes emotional display rules at work. Results demonstrated that these relationship dimensions significantly impacted the display rules employees reported they would adopt at work, with more control over expressions being exhibited for higher relative power targets (compared to lower and equal power targets) and for low solidarity targets (compared to high solidarity targets). Consistent with past work (e.g., Diefendorff and Greguras 2009; Matsumoto et al. 2005), display rules for anger involved greater control over emotions than display rules for happiness. We also found that for several of the display rules examined, (i.e., amplify, express, deamplify), there was an interaction between relative power and emotion, with the effect of power being stronger when the emotion was anger than when it was happiness. However, no consistent pattern of interactions between emotion and solidarity was observed. We elaborate on these findings and others below and discuss their implications for research and practice. The role of relative power Our results supported the general prediction that the relative power of interaction partners shapes display rules (Diefendorff and Richard 2008). Specifically, display rules for higher relative power targets involved more deamplifying (i.e., express with less intensity), neutralizing (i.e., show nothing), and masking (i.e., cover with a smile) of emotions, and less expressing (i.e., show as felt) and amplifying (i.e., express with more intensity) of emotions than display rules for equal or lower relative power targets. These findings are consistent with Matsumoto (1990) who reported that the display of negative emotions was rated as more appropriate when the target was lower in status compared to when the target was higher in status. However, our results revealed the novel finding that display rules did not differ between equal and lower relative power targets. While we expected to observe a difference between equal and lower relative power targets given prior theoretical work suggesting that having more power enables individuals to more freely express their feelings (Gibson and Schroeder 2002), it seems that the primary power differential that mattered was between higher power targets and all other power levels. The lack of any difference between equal and lower relative power targets may be at least partly a result of our use of a sample coming from a low power distance culture (U.S.) that does not emphasize status differences (Hofstede 2001; Matsumoto 2007). It may be that differences in display rules across all three levels of relative power would have been observed in a sample from a high power distance culture (e.g., Japan) in which there is a greater tendency to behave differently toward individuals at different levels of relative power (Matsumoto 2007). Interestingly, relative power did not affect display rules to qualify the expression of felt emotions, suggesting that the strategy of commenting on one s feelings by adding a smile to the expression was applied similarly across targets of varying levels of power. Perhaps this social smile conveys information that is not dependent upon and does not challenge hierarchical differences between employees, such as the desire of the actor to be polite to the target. Future research could examine the motives underlying the qualification of anger and happiness and the social meaning of such displays, as construed by actors and observers. In addition to the main effects for power, we also observed significant interactions between power and emotion in shaping display rules to express, amplify, and deamplify emotions, with the effects of power being larger for anger than for happiness (though the effects for happiness were still significant). Thus, the extent to which positive and negative emotions are shown or concealed appears to depend on the characteristics of the person with whom one is interacting. The effect of power on display rules to express emotions was further qualified by a significant 3-way interaction which showed that display rules were the least likely to involve expressing felt emotions when the emotion was anger and when the person was of both higher relative power and low solidarity. The fact that few people reported display rules to show anger to higher power individuals is not surprising given the potential negative social consequences of doing so (Gibson and Schroeder 2002), but this pattern of results also indicates

10 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: that how close the person is to this higher power individual may determine whether anger is expressed. The role of solidarity Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) found that display rules for coworkers were less likely to involve high control over emotional displays than display rules for customers, supervisors, and subordinates. They theorized that this effect may have been due to coworkers being the highest in closeness or solidarity of the targets examined. Our results are consistent with this assertion. When closeness was high, display rules involved greater expressing, amplifying, and qualifying of emotions and less masking, neutralizing and deamplifying of emotions compared to when closeness was low. These findings are consistent with Matsumoto et al. (2005) and Matsumoto (1990) who found that expressing emotions was more acceptable when the targets were presumably high in solidarity (family, close friends) compared to when they were presumably low in solidarity (casual acquaintance, stranger). However, the current findings extend this prior work by identifying solidarity as the interpersonal dimension responsible for display rules across targets. It also is worth noting that because all of the targets examined in our study were from the work context, the range of interpersonal closeness in our study may be smaller than would be found in Matsumoto s work (with targets such as stranger and brother being compared). As such, the effect of closeness in our study may be smaller than what would be found in a study with a more inclusive set of work and non-work interpersonal relationships. While we found significant effects of solidarity on display rules to deamplify both emotions (i.e., deamplification was greater for low solidarity targets), the effect was stronger for happiness than for anger. This finding was counter to our expectations and indicates that the degree of interpersonal liking had a larger impact on whether the display rule for happiness involved showing it with less intensity than is felt than on the same display rule for anger. In contrast, and consistent with expectations, the effect of solidarity on masking display rules was greater for anger than for happiness, indicating that display rules were more likely to involve covering the anger with a smile when the target was not close than when the target was close (and no corresponding effect was observed for happiness). While these findings suggest that the impact of closeness on display rules depended to some extent on the emotion involved, there was not a consistent pattern of interactions between solidarity and emotion. Rather it seems that solidarity and emotion both have consistent, relatively independent effects on display rules, combining in different ways to influence display rules to mask and deamplify emotions. Display rule conceptualization and measurement Although not a primary focus of this study, our results also provide insight into the measurement of display rules. We assessed display rules in a slightly different fashion from what has been used in recent work (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009; Matsumoto et al. 1998, 2005, 2008). The DRAI requires individuals to select one out of seven strategies (with an option of other also included) to indicate their display rule for a situation. This approach only allows individuals to select one strategy, implying that the strategies are mutually exclusive. Complicating matters is the fact that nominal responses to the DRAI (i.e., selection of one of seven strategies) are converted into seven dichotomous yes no responses (one for each of the seven strategies). While a theoretical argument can be made that an individual only adopts one display rule in a given situation, it also could be argued that the display rule one adopts in a situation may be probabilistic, with some display rules being more or less likely to be adopted than others. Further, individuals may vacillate between display rules during a particular interaction (Diefendorff and Richard 2008), starting off by masking anger with a smile, but moving to neutralize it and later deamplify it as the interaction evolves. These ideas lend theoretical support for independently assessing each expression management strategy on its own continuum in a manner like we have done. We recommend that such an approach be adopted in future display rule research. Our factor analytic work did not support consolidating the six expression management strategies into a more parsimonious set of strategies (e.g., show emotions, control emotions). While a simpler structure emerged for specific combinations of felt emotions, power, and closeness, there was little consistency in this structure across situations (e.g., sometimes mask and neutralize formed one factor and other times they did not). This observation is consistent with the divergent solutions found across recent attempts to consolidate these strategies (Matsumoto et al. 1998, 2005, 2008). Although the factor structure differed across all 12 circumstances examined, we did find that the strategies of neutralize and mask were on the same factor (alone or with other strategies) in 10 instances, whereas amplify and express were on the same factor (alone or with other strategies) in nine instances. While these findings suggest some cross-situational consistency for two broader factors, we also found that the specific strategies making up each factor were not affected in the same ways by the experimental manipulations (e.g., mask was affected by a twoway interaction between relative power and emotion, neutralize was not; express was shaped by a two-way and a three-way interaction, amplify was not), suggesting that attempts to combine the strategies may hide important

11 130 Motiv Emot (2010) 34: differences. As a result, we believe that there is some utility in considering these strategies as distinct approaches to managing emotional expressions and that organizational research on display rules could benefit from such an approach. Implications for research and practice This study has several implications for understanding the management of emotional expressions at work. In particular, our data indicate that emotional display rules vary as a function of interaction partner characteristics and felt emotions. This finding is in contrast to the typical treatment of display rules in organizational research in which it is assumed that one set of display rules guides emotional expression for the job (Diefendorff et al. 2006). Rather, it seems that the type of expression modification involved in display rules varies as a function of whether the interaction partner has more power versus equal or less power and whether the target is psychologically close to the actor. Further, the lack of significant interactions between relative power and solidarity in shaping display rules (with the exception of display rules to express emotions without modification) suggests that these relationship dimensions had largely independent effects. Thus, it seems that having a high level of favorability on one relationship dimension (e.g., the target is high in solidarity) does not compensate for low favorability on another dimension (e.g., the target is of higher relative power) in impacting display rules. Practically, it may be the case that organizational attempts to control employee emotional displays through the use of one size fits all display rules would be ineffective and perhaps even harmful. The fact that individuals adopted different display rules across work targets suggests that they are sensitive to relationship differences and adapt their display rules accordingly. This sensitivity of display rules to social cues suggests a high level of dexterity in managing emotional displays, even in the context of organizations which often have strong norms pertaining to emotional behaviors (Rafaeli and Sutton 1987). Further, knowing these results, management could emphasize in interpersonal effectiveness training the importance of being aware of the power and solidarity of one s interaction partners and tailoring one s emotional expressions accordingly. Of course, an important next step is to explore the links of these different display rules with interpersonal effectiveness. It may be that certain display rules are more advantageous in some social situations (e.g., mask anger for higher power targets) compared to others (e.g., deamplify anger for equal power targets). Limitations As with any study, the present investigation has some limitations. First, our use of a part-time, predominantly female sample of workers limits the generalizability of our results. Further, we excluded several individuals from our final sample because they could not realistically imagine a lower power person in their work environment, a finding that may be attributable in part to the sample s young age and entry-level positions. Though we dropped individuals who could not realistically imagine such a person at their work, it is still possible that the display rules for the remaining workers might differ in some way from the display rules of full-time employees. Nonetheless, given that part-time employees are an important segment of the workforce (representing about 18% of the U.S. workforce, or 24.7 million employees; Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004) and are an important source of labor supply in fastgrowing segments of the U.S. economy (Fallick 1991; Tilly 1991) we contend they are worth studying in their own right (e.g., Grandey et al. 2002). The fact that most of the workers were female may have biased the results given that there is evidence that women generally have higher levels of emotional intelligence than men (Brackett and Mayer 2003). Future research should examine the influence of relative power and solidarity on display rule perceptions in a sample of older, full-time employees with approximately equal numbers of men and women. Second, future research may consider focusing on additional contextual factors as influences on emotional display rule perceptions. These factors may include the pace of the work (Rafaeli and Sutton 1989), the presence of other simultaneous task demands, or the experience of additional discrete felt emotions (boredom, enthusiasm). Research focused specifically on customer interactions might consider the influence of the type of customer interaction (service relationship vs. service encounter) on display rules. Consistent with these ideas, Rafaeli and Sutton (1990) found that the degree to which customers were demanding and the busyness of stores both predicted the display of positive emotions, with greater customer demand occurring in less busy stores, thus resulting in more displays of positive emotions. These findings suggest that specific features of the work context shape the emotional display rules employees adopt for use in particular interpersonal interactions. Another limitation of this study is that we did not examine actual interpersonal interactions, but rather used scenario-based descriptions of interactions that were read by participants. It is possible that individuals actual emotional display rules may be somewhat different in real situations than what they reported here. Nonetheless, the results reported here are consistent with the underlying