WHEN CAN A WOMAN LEADER GET ANGRY? John Antonakis Professor of Organizational Behavior

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1 1 WHEN CAN A WOMAN LEADER GET ANGRY? John Antonakis Professor of Organizational Behavior When can a woman leader get angry? Hardly ever, as I will discuss below. Before delving into this question at length let s go back a bit in time. Remember the showdown between Segolène Royal and Nicholas Sarkozy in May 2007? The International Herald Tribune had this to say about this incident: Finally, in a highly anticipated televised duel on Wednesday night that did not disappoint for high drama, Segolene Royal's cool snapped. The first woman in a position to seriously contest for the presidency of France erupted in anger toward the end of the primetime debate, the first and last between Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy before one of them is elected on Sunday.... But it was a surprise and potentially damaging for Royal that she, not Sarkozy, proved quick to anger. During their long and sometimes bitter election campaign that has energized French voters hungry for new direction, Royal has sought to portray Sarkozy as too unstable, too impetuous, to lead the nuclear-armed nation. On Wednesday night, in front of millions of television viewers, Sarkozy turned the tables. She got furious when he started talking about handicapped children, saying he was "playing" with the issue...."you jump off the rails very easily, Madame," said Sarkozy. "To be president of the Republic, one must be calm; I don't know why Mrs. Royal, who's usually calm, has lost her calm." [italics added] The LA Times had the following as a headline the day after the debate: Socialist is aggressive in presidential debate, stating further, Although Royal projects a serene, maternal and tolerant image on the campaign trail, she seemed determined to display strength and authority to voters who doubt her credentials. I have watched the scene countless times. Royal was certainly angry. However, she was rather calm, very composed, and cool. She did not erupt in anger, nor did she get furious. Why then was she portrayed in this way? Why does the LA Times refer to Royal as being aggressive yet it stated that she usually projects a maternal and tolerant image? Why is aggression and anger associated with strength and authority? Does it pay to show anger and aggression if you are a woman? Could Royal have lost the election in part because of this much-publicized emotional "outburst"? Stereotypes and decision-making The answers to these questions lie in part in understanding stereotypes and the way in which they affect how perceivers expect target individuals to behave (and how they process information about individuals). The consequences of these stereotypes are double standards. That is, women are not held to the same standard that men are, which is unfair. It is also not economically viable because individuals are placed in work settings and positions that are apparently congruent with their gender characteristics, which impedes meritocractic selection decisions. For instance, Goldin and Rouse (2000) studied the proportion of female musicians in major orchestras and found that blind auditions increased by.50 the probability that a woman would advance to the next round of the audition process 1. In other words, previously women were less likely to be selected when

2 2 the conductor could see who was playing, which explained the dismal proportions of women in the big orchestras in the U.S. Why did the above phenomenon occur? If conductors have stereotypes that men are better musicians than women are then conductors will make attributions so as to maintain cognitive consistency (i.e., maintain the original thought without having to change one s mind). That is, a man who plays well in the audition will induce an internal attribution from the conductor (the man played well because he is a good player); if a woman plays well in the audition it will induce an external attribution (she played well because of luck). In both cases, cognitive consistency is maintained. If the man plays badly then it will induce an external attribution (he may have had a bad day); however, a woman playing badly will induce an internal attribution (she played badly because she is a woman and women aren t good musicians). Again, the conductor maintains cognitive consistency by justifying the original thought. This type of stereotypical thinking explains why few women were previously selected to play in orchestras. However, putting a screen between players and conductors suddenly increased the percentage of women selected because the decision was taken on purely objective criteria. As shown above, observers bend and twist what they see so as to justify their original positions and to maintain cognitive consistency. Individuals are not always rational decision-makers, as has been shown repeatedly in the psychological decision-making literature. Stereotypes obstruct minority figures from progressing. Apart from directly impeding progress, stereotypes also create social injunctions and self-limiting behavior that is, stereotypes prevent individuals from acting in ways that are anti-stereotypical. If individuals do act in anti-stereotypical ways (e.g., a woman acting angry as I discuss below) they are rebuked for doing so by being evaluated unfavorably. Finally, it is interesting (and sad) to note that individuals are not conscious of the fact that they use double standards (i.e., the stereotypes operate automatically) and that both women and men are prone to exhibiting stereotypically-driven decision making. National culture; software of the mind For those of you who have not done so yet, please take a look at the article (this issue) written by Marika Angerfelt and titled Women and leadership: How organizations can remove obstacles and create change. In this article, Marika does a very nice job in explaining how expectations, rooted in gender stereotypes, can create situations that make it very hard for a woman leader to succeed. For those of you wishing to read further on leadership (including a chapter by Eagly and Carli on gender issues) take a look at my book The nature of leadership 2. Let me recap some themes and introduce others to explain how stereotypes become selffulfilling. The first thing to understand is culture at the societal level. Culture is a social glue of sorts that keeps societies together 3 and refers to value systems that provides mental programs to individuals to behave in particular ways 4. Of course, all individuals are different; however, there is significant between-country variance on dimensions of culture and individuals within a particular culture behave relatively similarly on broad cultural dimensions.

3 3 Societies differ in how social roles are assigned to men and women,5. That is, how individuals should act, as a function of gender, varies according to culture. In some cultures, social role expectations are polarized and in other cultures they are more egalitarian. When they are egalitarian, individuals are quite free to self-express their personalities and to act in ways they deem fit. However, the more polarized gender role expectations are in a society, the more stereotypically men and women are expected to act. These expectations become self-fulfilling. In polarized societies, men are expected to display characteristics typically associated with being competitive, dominant, aggressive and the like. Women, though, are expected to act in a more cooperative, submissive, and communal manner. These social norms are very powerful and it is hard to violate them. In a presentation that Marika Angerfelt and I made at the 2007 Swiss Society of Psychology Congress, we showed that countries that had egalitarian values had a significantly higher proportion of societal women empowerment (i.e., a higher proportion of women elected to parliament and controlling economic resources) as compared to countries that were more masculine. In masculine societies, men are expected to occupy the highest echelons of power; being a woman makes it hard to get to the top. Furthermore, men are more free to act in ways that a stereotypically associated with the male gender (i.e., be competitive, aggressive, etc.), which helps them to get ahead. About anger Displays of anger produce attributions of social status 6 ; anger is associated with being dominant and competent. Individuals that display anger may be seen as being of higher social status because those types of individuals are provided with more behavioral "leeway" (i.e., they are less constrained in how they can behave as compared with individuals of lower status). Thus, anger can be seen as a marker of social status. Anger is a powerful emotion that can be used to advance one's agenda in many domains (e.g., can be useful in negotiations, as demonstrated in a recent study 7 ). However, given stereotypes of men and women, it seems likely that women are not "allowed" to display anger because they would violate social role expectations. Anger is seen as being more appropriate for men (whereas smiling is more appropriate for women) 8 ; women have to exhibit more appeasing social cues because they apparently are of low status. Another study focusing on leaders showed that women but not men leaders were penalized when demonstrating anger 9. Interestingly, a study that was published a couple of months ago showed that in simulated employment interviews, men who expressed anger were seen as being of higher status, were offered a higher salary, and were seen as more competent than were women 10. This study also showed that even when the woman was presented as being of high status, she was still "punished" (in terms of evaluations) when showing anger. The results of the above studies, conducted in the U.S., which is a masculine society just like Switzerland is, are interesting and show that women are not allowed to show anger because showing anger is not associated with stereotypical female characteristics.

4 4 In a large-scale study that I am undertaking, I gave leaders personality tests and also measured how their leadership styles were perceived by their followers, peers, and bosses. I measured various styles of leadership that are known to be indicative of effective leadership. Although this study is still underway, a preliminary analysis showed quite nicely how stereotypes play in the favor of men and not of women. That is, for a dimension of personality labeled neuroticism (which includes measures on a person's display of negative emotions like anger, moodiness, impulsivity, etc), I found that the relationship between neuroticism and effective leadership was negative for women. That is, the more a woman was high on neuroticism, the less she was seen as exhibiting effective leadership. However, for men the relation between neuroticism and effective leadership tended towards the positive (see Figure)! Effective leadership high Gender Women Men low low high Negative emotions Moving forward The results of my preliminary study show that individuals prefer women who do not show negative emotions (including anger); however, they do not show this kind of aversion towards men. For the same trait (high neuroticism) women, but not men, are penalized (i.e., evaluated lower on effective leadership). This is clear evidence of a double standard, which is not right. Thus, the evidence suggests that it does not pay to show anger (or other male traits) if one is a woman. So, what should women do to get ahead? As discussed by Eagly and Carli:

5 5... gender roles lead people to expect and prefer women to be communal [friendly, kind, unselfish], creating a double bind for female leaders who must demonstrate exceptional competence to be seen as equal in ability to men and must also avoid threatening others with their competence and lack of warmth. Women who appear to be direct, competent, and assertive may thus be seen as illegitimately seeking leadership or influence, but gain from combining competence with warmth. Conversely, there is generally no incongruity between the male gender role and leadership roles. Men s leadership potential is less in doubt, giving them greater behavioral latitude than women have. Men s greater resistance to female leadership also contributes to the slowed ascendance of women into higher levels of leadership, where men currently reside in much higher proportions than women. Research thus makes a strong case that prejudicial barriers against female leaders are a major factor accounting for their rarity in elite leadership roles. Based on the above, it seems that for women to be liked they must not demonstrate negative emotions or characteristics that are too "masculine"--when they do, they receive the "iron maiden" label (e.g., Hilary Clinton has often been criticized for not being feminine enough) a. However, if they do not demonstrate these male characteristics, they will not emerge as leaders. Thus, they are constantly walking on eggs. The only way in which we can create a more tolerant and egalitarian society, where individuals can self-express without being punished for not adhering to genderstereotypic norms is to gradually breakdown these stereotypes. The most important individuals who can be catalysts to this change are not women but men, because it is men who have a stranglehold on power in most societies. Women who have power have a responsibility too. We need to have more women role models so that when we ask someone to think of a leader, the image of a man or a woman is equally likely. Of course, culture and our values have been shaped by various forces (i.e., economic, geographical, historical etc.) and no-one who does not purposefully call for women to be in a subservient role to men is to blame. However, sitting back and ignoring the results of scientific studies that demonstrate bias in evaluations is not right. As a society we cannot be complacent about gender issues. We all have an ethical obligation to set the situation right. We need to work harder to appoint more competent women (and minorities) to high-status positions by creating "blind auditions"-- that is, using selection or evaluation systems that are objective. I look forward to a society where blowing a fuse is not only reserved for men; a society where individuals are free to express their personalities without having to pay a price. a Interested readers can refer to (10 Jan. 2008), where I stated that Hillary Clinton would not win the democratic nomination. For similar reasons (stemming from negative stereotypes about blacks), I also predicted that Barrack Obama would not win the presidency in the U.S. (I am one of the few social scientists who currently holds this position given that all polls, as well as futures markets and betting agencies are giving the edge to Obama). Although Obama is more charismatic than McCain is, Obama is a minority figure and thus has extra baggage to carry as compared to McCain. Obama will be held to a higher standard of performance and when crunch-time comes, individuals in the poll booths might switch to the safer bet (I sincerely hope that I am wrong on this prediction).

6 6 1 Goldin, C., & Rouse, C. (2000). Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians. The American Economic Review, 90, Antonakis, J., Cianciolo, A. T. & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2004). The nature of leadership. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. 3 Mead, M. (1978). Culture and commitment: The new relationships between the generations in the 1970s. New York: Columbia University Press. 4 Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. Berkshire, England: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 5 House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P.W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Leadership, Culture, and Organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications 6 Tidens, L. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expression on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, Sinaceur, M., & Tiedens, L.Z. (2006). Get mad and get more even: When and why anger expression is effective in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, Hess, U., Adams, R. B., & Kleck, R. E. (2005). Who may frown and who should smile? Dominance, affiliation, and the display of happiness and anger. Cognition and Emotion, 19, Lewis, K. M. (2000). When leaders display emotion: How followers respond to negative emotional expression of male and female leaders. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, Brescoll, V. L., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2008). Can an angry woman get ahead? Psychological Science, 19,