I’m no lady; I’m a leader: When gender stereotypes of anger do and don’t matter in leadership

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Many have speculated that gender stereotypes of emotion in general and of anger expression in particular hold female leaders back. Conventional wisdom suggests that women leaders are disproportionally penalized for expressing anger, because anger is believed to be more appropriate for men and leaders but not for women. However, theoretical and empirical evidence for this assumption is scare and inconsistent. The present study investigates an alternative assumption that women leaders are as free to express anger as men leaders, but that perceptual errors lead to misinterpretations of women leaders’ anger expression intensity. Such perceptual errors occur because male faces are generally perceived as more dominant, whereas female faces are generally perceived as more affiliate, and because dominant individuals are expected to express more anger than affiliate individuals. Results of an event-sampling field study show that followers underestimated women leaders’ anger expressions in positive interactions (i.e., interactions where anger expressions are less expected and appropriated), but overestimated women leaders' anger expressions in negative interactions (i.e., interactions where anger expressions are more expected and appropriated). In turn, the perceived anger expressions intensity but not leaders’ gender per se had an impact on followers’ leadership effectiveness ratings. This study suggests that followers do not hold double standards for women leaders’ anger expressions but misinterpret the intensity of their women leaders’ anger. Thus, women but not men leaders need to be aware of perceptual errors that may undermine the intended social signal of their anger expression, whereas gender stereotypes of emotions may matter to a lesser extent in leadership than conventional wisdom would have suggested.