Observers’ expectations regarding the emotional reactions of others in a failure context: the role of status and perceived dominance

Abstract

An important determinant of observer’s expectations about other’s emotional reactions is the status of the other person. Status can be derived from a variety of cues and in any given situation more than one status cue may be available. The present study showed that both information about another person’s organizational status and information about their level of social dominance based on verbal descriptions or facial appearance influenced the emotions that the person was expected to show. Two vignette studies were conducted to investigate the combined impact of these two sources of status information. When perceptions of dominance were manipulated through facial appearance as well as a verbal description, only dominance but not organizational status influenced anticipated emotional reactions to failure. When the only cue for dominance was facial appearance, both organizational status and appearance influenced anticipated emotions. In turn, anticipated emotional reactions predicted the expectation that the person would take responsibility for the failure or apologize, and these expectations influenced the degree to which observers recommended firing the person.