Empathy arousal and emotional reactions to victims of the gender pay gap

Men and women are well aware of the gender pay gap. The present study involved four experiments (N = 341, student sample, N = 203 general population sample) in which we indirectly measured empathy by asking participants to rate the non-complex and complex emotions they felt when reading a scenario in which a woman described her pay situation. Experiments 1 (equal pay vs. unequal pay) and 2, 3 & 4 (angry vs. depressed reaction to pay inequality) investigate differences in empathy arousal between men and women by assessing their emotions. Globally, both men and women identified correctly emotions expressed by the women victim of pay inequity. On complex emotions, women express more other suffering emotions than men, only in Experiment 4. Coupled with expression of guilt/shame for men only, these results are discussed in the perspective of future research.

Experimentally manipulated anger activates implicit cognitions about social hierarchy

A correlational pilot study (N = 143) and an integrative data analysis of two experiments (total N = 377) provide evidence linking anger to the psychology of social hierarchy. The experiments demonstrate that the experience of anger increases the psychological accessibility of implicit cognitions related to social hierarchy: compared to participants in a control condition, participants in an anger-priming condition completed word stems with significantly more hierarchy-related words. We found little support for sex differences in the effect of anger on implicit hierarchy-related cognition; effects were equivalent across male and female participants. Findings fit with functionalist evolutionary views of anger suggesting that anger may motivate the use of dominance to strive for high social rank in group hierarchies. Implications for downstream behaviour, including aggression and negotiation, are discussed.

What is it about your face that tells me what you want from me? Emotional appeals are associated with specific mental images

Emotional facial expressions have a communicative function. Besides information about the internal states (emotions) and the intentions of the expresser (action tendencies), they also communicate what the expresser wants the observer to do (appeals). Yet, there is very little research on the association of appeals with specific emotions. The present study has the aim to study the mental association of appeals and expressions through reverse correlation. Using reverse correlation, we estimated the observer-specific internal representations of expressions associated with four different appeals. A second group of participants rated the resulting expressions. As predicted, we found that the appeal to celebrate was uniquely associated with a happy expression and the appeal to empathize with a sad expression. A pleading appeal to stop was more strongly associated with sadness than with anger, whereas a command to stop was comparatively more strongly associated with anger. The results show that observers internally represent appeals as specific emotional expressions.

Do targets of ostracism truthfully communicate their emotional reactions to sources?

Ostracism triggers negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and hurt feelings. Do targets of ostracism truthfully share their emotions with the sources of ostracism? Drawing on past research on social-functional accounts of emotions and interpersonal emotion regulation, we investigated the possibility that targets may misrepresent their emotions (i.e., gaming emotions). We conducted three experiments (N = 1058; two pre-registered) using an online ball-tossing game, in which participants were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized. Consistent with the literature, we found that ostracized individuals were more hurt, sad, and angry than included individuals. However, we found little and inconsistent evidence that ostracized (vs included) individuals misrepresented their emotional reactions to the sources. Further, Bayesian analyses offered more support against misrepresentation of emotions. These findings suggest that targets of ostracism truthfully communicated their social pain to the sources.

Female-to-Male Sexual Assault: The Role of the Perpetrator's Attractiveness and Attributed Emotional States on Victim Blame

This study investigated the effect of the victim's gender and the perpetrator's attractiveness on the observer's blame on the male and female victims of coercive sexual contact. Two hundred and ninety-six participants (184 females) were enrolled in an experiment in which the victim's gender and the offender's attractiveness were manipulated using vignettes depicting cross-gender sexual assault. Participants rated emotions that the victims experienced in being assaulted and attributed victim blame. The results indicate that the male victim was blamed more than the female victim, especially when the female perpetrator was described as attractive. The female victim was perceived as having experienced more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions than the male victim. The effect of the victim's gender on victim blaming was mediated by both positive and negative emotions.

Inferring Causal Factors of Core Affect Dynamics on Social Participation through the Lens of the Observer

A core endeavour in current affective computing and social signal processing research is the construction of datasets embedding suitable ground truths to foster machine learning methods. This practice brings up hitherto overlooked intricacies. In this paper, we consider causal factors potentially arising when human raters evaluate the affect fluctuations of subjects involved in dyadic interactions and subsequently categorise them in terms of social participation traits. To gauge such factors, we propose an emulator as a statistical approximation of the human rater, and we first discuss the motivations and the rationale behind the approach.The emulator is laid down in the next section as a phenomenological model where the core affect stochastic dynamics as perceived by the rater are captured through an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process; its parameters are then exploited to infer potential causal effects in the attribution of social traits. Following that, by resorting to a publicly available dataset, the adequacy of the model is evaluated in terms of both human raters' emulation and machine learning predictive capabilities. We then present the results, which are followed by a general discussion concerning findings and their implications, together with advantages and potential applications of the approach.

Gazing the dusty mirror: Joint effect of narcissism and sadism on workplace incivility via indirect effect of paranoia, antagonism, and emotional intelligence

Workplace productivity is badly affected by many negative factors such as narcissism, and sadism. In addition, paranoia and antagonism play an important role in increasing workplace incivility. Through emotional intelligence, such negative behaviors could be addressed by managers and their junior colleagues. The current study aims to investigate the parallel mediating role of paranoia, antagonism, and emotional intelligence on the relationship between narcissism, sadism, and workplace incivility. A survey approach was used. Primary data was collected in PLS-SEM. The population of the study was all faculty members in higher education institutions in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) region. A measurement model and structural model were developed. The measurement model demonstrated that convergent and discriminant validities were established. The structural model's findings revealed that narcissism, antagonism, and emotional intelligence were not mediated between narcissism and workplace incivility. Similarly, emotional intelligence did not play any mediating role between sadism and workplace incivility. This implied that emotional intelligence has no role in decreasing or reducing workplace uncivil behavior.

How and When Can Employees with Status Motivation Attain Their Status in a Team? The Roles of Ingratiation, OCBI, and Procedural Justice Climate

Despite research having identified two major routes to status: dominance and competence, both routes seem inadequate to capture the “whole picture” of how people get ahead in organizations. Building on social exchange theory and social status literature, we identify two novel paths and their important boundary conditions by which employees with status motivation can achieve status. Specifically, we propose that employees with status motivation obtain status (operationalized as other-perceived status and promotability) by engaging in ingratiation toward their supervisors and organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals. In addition, these relationships are weakened in teams where the procedural justice climate is high. Results from four studies conducted in China and the United States, which consist of three experiments (Study 1: N = 240; Study 2: N = 180; Study 4: N = 309) and one field study of 427 employees from 74 teams (Study 3), provide support for most of the propositions we proposed. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Third-Party Perceptions of Male and Female Status: Male Physical Strength and Female Physical Attractiveness Cue High Status

Status is a universal feature of human sociality. A lesser-studied adaptive problem surrounding status is assessing who has which levels of status in a given group (e.g., identifying which people possess high status). Here, we integrate theory and methods from evolutionary social science, animal behavior, and social psychology, and we use an emotion inference paradigm to investigate what cues render people high status in the eyes of social perceivers. This paradigm relies on robust associations between status and emotion display—particularly the anger display. If a target is expected to enact (but not necessarily feel) anger, this would suggest that social perceivers view that target as higher status. By varying target attributes, we test whether those attributes are considered status cues in the eyes of social perceivers. In two well-powered, pre-registered experiments in the United States (N = 451) and India (N = 378), participants read one of eight vignettes about a male or female target—described as high or low in either physical strength or physical attractiveness (possible status cues)—who is thwarted by another person, and then reported expectations of the target’s felt and enacted anger. We find that people expected physically stronger (versus less strong) men and more (versus less) physically attractive women to enact greater anger when thwarted by a same-sex other. Strength had no significant effect on estimations of female status and attractiveness had no significant effect on estimations of male status. There were no differences in expectations of felt anger. Results suggest that people use men’s strength and women’s attractiveness as status cues. Moreover, results underscore the notion that focusing on male-typical cues of status might obscure our understanding of the female status landscape. We discuss how this paradigm might be fruitfully employed to examine and discover other unexplored cues of male and female status.

#funnypoliticians: How Do Political Figures Use Humor on Twitter?

Social media has increased its popularity among politicians. If they wish to succeed in the political arena, politicians need to present themselves to citizens as attractive individuals through these platforms. This study examined how politicians present themselves using humor on Twitter. We analyzed tweets (n = 6,443) from 27 politicians to determine their use of different types of humor and its relationship with age, gender, or political position. We also present changes in humor use in relation to the publication of a political survey in which politicians who were part of this study were evaluated. Results showed politicians' use of humor is relatively low in frequency and primarily aggressive. Politicians who are male, younger, and in the opposition tend to use more aggressive humor. We discuss the results considering the role of aggressive humor in political messages. Based on the analyses of tweets and the publication of the survey, we propose as a hypothesis for future studies that politicians' use of humor on Twitter could be affected by the publication of these kinds of surveys.

Leader Extraversion as a Boundary Condition in the Relationship between Transformational Leadership, Vitality, and Job Improvement

We examine the relationship between transformational leadership and job improvement behaviors by considering the moderating effect of leader extraversion and the mediating role of employee vitality. Multi-level path analysis on data from 101 leaders and 619 subordinates provided support to the moderating effect of leader extraversion, such that the relationship between transformational leadership and employee vitality is stronger when the level of leader extraversion is high. Moreover, a moderated mediation procedure showed that the indirect effect of transformational leadership on job improvement via employee vitality was conditional to the level of leader extraversion. We highlight the original contributions of these findings by discussing the moderating role of leader extraversion as an understudied theoretical alternative to its already well-explored role as an antecedent to leadership behaviors. On a practical level, our results indicate that organizations should consider not only what leaders do (transformational leadership behaviors) but also how these behaviors are contextualized by leaders' typical approach (extraversion) to instill a maximum of positive emotion such as vitality in employees.

The Chicken and Egg of Pride and Social Rank

Prior research has found an association between pride experiences and social rank outcomes. However, the causal direction of this relationship remains unclear. The current research used a longitudinal design (N = 1,653) to investigate whether pride experiences are likely to be a cause, consequence, or both, of social rank outcomes, by tracking changes in individuals' pride and social rank over time. Prior research also has uncovered distinct correlational relationships between the two facets of pride, authentic and hubristic, and two forms of social rank, prestige and dominance, respectively. We therefore separately examined longitudinal relationships between each pride facet and each form of social rank. Results reveal distinct bidirectional relationships between authentic pride and prestige and hubristic pride and dominance, suggesting that specific kinds of pride experiences and specific forms of social rank are both an antecedent and a consequence of one another.

Does It Pay to Treat Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019? Social Perception of Physicians Treating Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the public has often expressed great appreciation toward medical personnel who were often shown in the media expressing strong emotions about the situation. To examine whether the perception of people on a physician is in fact influenced by whether the physician treats patients with COVID-19 and the emotions they expressed in response to the situation, 454 participants were recruited in May 2020. Participants saw facial expressions of anger, sadness, happiness, and neutrality which supposedly were shown by physicians who were presented as working either in COVID-19 wards or in an internal medicine ward. Participants rated how competent, empathetic, caring, and likable each physician was, to what degree they would wish to be treated by each physician, and what salary each physician deserved. Physicians treating patients with COVID-19 were seen more positively and as deserving higher pay; they appeared more competent, caring, likable, and were more likely to be chosen as a caregiver compared to physicians not treating patients with COVID-19. The expressed emotions of physicians had a strong impact on how they were perceived, yet this effect was largely unrelated to whether they treated patients with COVID-19 or not such that happy physicians seemed more empathetic, caring, and likable than the physicians who showed negative emotions. Positive regard toward physicians treating patients with COVID-19 was associated with the fact that they were seen as saving lives and not due to the risk imposed by their work.

Is a downwards head tilt a cross-cultural signal of dominance? Evidence for a universal visual illusion

The present pre-registered research provides the first evidence that a downwards head tilt is sufficient to communicate dominance from a neutral facial expression among the Mayangna, members of an unindustrialized, small-scale traditional society in Nicaragua who have had minimal exposure to North American culture. Consistent with the Action Unit imposter effect observed in North American populations (Witkower and Tracy in Psychol Sci 30:893-906, 2019), changes to the appearance of the upper face caused by a downwards head tilt were sufficient to elicit perceptions of dominance among this population. Given that the Mayangna are unlikely to associate a downwards head tilt or related apparent facial changes with dominance as a result of cross-cultural learning, the present results suggest that perceptions of dominance formed from a downwards head tilt, and the visual illusion shaping these perceptions, are a widely generalizable, and possibly universal, feature of human psychology.

Effects of Game Situation-Dependent Emotions on Sport Spectators' Food Craving

This study sought to challenge prevalent accounts of emotional eating by exploring the effects of situation-dependent emotions on consumers’ food craving. Four specific game situations in the context of spectator sports, each corresponding to the four types of emotional coping (outcome-desire conflict, avoidance, fulfillment, and pursuit), were identified as follows: decisive victories, decisive losses, close victories, and close losses. By employing laboratory-based virtual reality spectatorship, Study 1 tested the causal effects of happiness (fulfillment), anger (conflict), sadness (conflict), fear (avoidance), and hope (pursuit) on food craving. Study 2 further designed fans’ previous association between emotions and eating as a moderating mechanism in the context of online sport viewership. The results of the two experiments supported the three theoretical principles of eating behavior, including the “food as fuel” principle of anger, the hedonic eating principle of happiness, and the self-regulation principle of hope. However, the results rejected the escape awareness principle of sadness and fear. The study concludes with a discussion of context-dependent emotional positioning and intervention strategies for marketers and policy makers.

Relative deprivation and social anxiety among Chinese migrant children: Testing a moderated mediation model of perceived control and belief in a just world

To examine the relationship between relative deprivation and social anxiety, which affects mental health, and investigate the mediating role of perceived control and the moderating role of belief in a just world (BJW) in an understudied population in Asia, we surveyed 1573 rural-to-urban migrant children (48% female; M_age = 12.3, SD = 1.7) in southeast China. Relative deprivation was positively correlated with social anxiety; perceived control partially mediated this connection. Moreover, BJW moderated the indirect effect, which was stronger for male migrant children with lower levels of BJW. The limitations and practical implications of this study are discussed.

Microaggressions: Privileged Observers' Duty to Act and What They Can Do

Racism and sexism that manifest as microaggressions are commonly experienced by members of minoritized groups. These actions and comments erode their subjects' vitality and sense of belonging. Individuals from minoritized groups are often left in a quandary, weighing the potential benefits and risks of addressing the comments. Placing the burden to interrupt bias on our marginalized colleagues is unjust. In part, it is inappropriate to expect them to dismantle a system that they did not create. It is essential for individuals with privilege who observe microaggressions to address the speaker and support their colleagues. In this Ethics Rounds, we present 2 cases in which individuals from minoritized groups experience racism and sexism that manifest as microaggressions. The first case involves a Black female physician making recommendations in a business meeting being characterized by a male colleague as emotional. The commentators analyze how both gender and race constrain the range of acceptable emotions one may exhibit and the harm that this causes. The second case involves a Black intern being identified by a parent as a custodian. Commentators describe how such microaggressions can harm trainees' performance and sense of belonging. In both cases, observers did nothing or only spoke to the subject in private. Commentators provide specific guidance regarding actions that bystanders can take to become upstanders and how they can decenter themselves and their discomfort and leverage their privilege to interrupt microaggressions. By becoming upstanders, individuals can remove the disproportionate responsibility for addressing microaggressions from marginalized colleagues.

On Methods and Marshmallows: A Roadmap for Science That Is Openly Feminist and Radically Open

In this commentary, we argue that feminist science and open science can benefit from each other’s wisdom and critiques in service of creating systems that produce the highest quality science with the maximum potential for improving the lives of women. To do this, we offer a constructive analysis, focusing on common methods used in open science, including open materials and data, preregistration, and large sample sizes, and illuminate potential benefits and costs from a feminist science perspective. We also offer some solutions and deeper questions both for individual researchers and the feminist psychology and open science communities. By broadening our focus from a myopic prioritization of certain methodological and analytic approaches in open science, we hope to give a balanced perspective of science that emerges from each movement’s strengths and is openly feminist and radically open.

Do People Agree on How Positive Emotions Are Expressed? A Survey of Four Emotions and Five Modalities Across 11 Cultures

While much is known about how negative emotions are expressed in different modalities, our understanding of the nonverbal expressions of positive emotions remains limited. In the present research, we draw upon disparate lines of theoretical and empirical work on positive emotions, and systematically examine which channels are thought to be used for expressing four positive emotions: feeling moved, gratitude, interest, and triumph. Employing the intersubjective approach, an established method in cross-cultural psychology, we first explored how the four positive emotions were reported to be expressed in two North American community samples (Studies 1a and 1b: n = 1466). We next confirmed the cross-cultural generalizability of our findings by surveying respondents from ten countries that diverged on cultural values (Study 2: n = 1826). Feeling moved was thought to be signaled with facial expressions, gratitude with the use of words, interest with words, face and voice, and triumph with body posture, vocal cues, facial expressions, and words. These findings provide cross-culturally consistent findings of differential expressions across positive emotions. Notably, positive emotions were thought to be expressed via modalities that go beyond the face.

The Social Effects of Emotions

We review the burgeoning literature on the social effects of emotions, documenting the impact of emotional expressions on observers' affect, cognition, and behavior. We find convergent evidence that emotional expressions influence observers' affective reactions, inferential processes, and behaviors across various domains, including close relationships, group decision making, customer service, negotiation, and leadership. Affective reactions and inferential processes mediate the effects of emotional expressions on observers' behaviors, and the relative potency of these mediators depends on the observers' information processing and the perceived appropriateness of the emotional expressions. The social effects of emotions are similar across expressive modalities (face, voice, body, text, symbols). We discuss the findings in relation to emotional contagion, emotional intelligence, emotion regulation, emotions as social information (EASI) theory, and the functionality of emotions in engendering social influence. Finally, we identify gaps in our current understanding of the topic and call for interdisciplinary collaboration and methodological diversification. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Social-rank cues: Decoding rank from physical characteristics, behaviors, and possessions

Inferring individuals' social rank-their position within a hierarchy-is central to many interactions. However, how do observers assess actors' social rank? The current article reviews three broad sources of social-rank cues: physical characteristics, behaviors, and possessions. First, observers infer an actor's social rank from ancestral stereotypes tethered to physical characteristics. Second, observers ascribe social rank to an actor from behaviors that range from nonverbal communication to explicit acts.Finally, observers assume social rank from actors' possessions. The present review emphasizes recent developments in these areas and poses question for future research.

Reading emotions, reading people: Emotion perception and inferences drawn from perceived emotions

Emotional expressions play an important role in coordinating social interaction. We review research on two critical processes that underlie such coordination: (1) perceiving emotions from emotion expressions and (2) drawing inferences from perceived emotions. Broad evidence indicates that (a) observers can accurately perceive emotions from a person's facial, bodily, vocal, verbal, and symbolic expressions and that such emotion perception is further informed by contextual information. Moreover, (b) observers draw consequential and contextualized inferences from these perceived emotions about the expresser, the situation, and the self. Thus, emotion expressions enable coordinated action by providing information that facilitates adaptive behavioral responses. We recommend that future studies investigate how people integrate information from different expressive modalities and how this affects consequential inferences.

Embodied power: Specific facial muscles automatically respond to power-related information processing

Derived from embodiment approaches, we tested the assumption that specific facial muscle contractions are simulated upon the categorization of power-related words. For this, we used an interference task that required participants to categorize trait adjectives according to their underlying power. Response latencies of contractions of either the corrugator supercilii (pulls the eyebrows together) or the depressor anguli oris muscle (pulls the corners of the mouth downwards) were assessed. In two experiments, we expected and found that the speed of facial responses crucially depends on whether a high power or low power adjective was categorized. More precisely, corrugator responses were faster to high power adjectives whereas depressor responses were faster to low power adjectives. These findings support the assumption that the meaning of power is at least partially grounded in motor representations underlying specific facial expressions.

Facing the enemy: Spontaneous facial reactions towards suffering opponents

The suffering of an opponent is an important social affective cue that modulates how aggressive interactions progress. To investigate the affective consequences of opponent suffering on a revenge seeking individual, two experiments (total N = 82) recorded facial muscle activity while participants observed the reaction of a provoking opponent to a (retaliatory) sound punishment in a laboratory aggression task. Opponents reacted via prerecorded videos either with facial displays of pain, sadness, or neutrality. Results indicate that participants enjoyed seeing the provocateur suffer: indexed by a coordinated muscle response featuring an increase in zygomaticus major (and orbicularis oculi muscle) activation accompanied by a decrease in corrugator supercilii activation. This positive facial reaction was only shown while a provoking opponent expressed pain. Expressions of sadness, and administration of sound blasts to nonprovoking opponents, did not modulate facial activity. Overall, the results suggest that revenge-seeking individuals enjoy observing the offender suffer, which could represent schadenfreude or satisfaction of having succeeded in the retaliation goal.

Favorable Evaluations of Black and White Women's Workplace Anger During the Era of #MeToo

Researchers investigating gender and anger have consistently found that White women, but not White men, are evaluated unfavorably when experiencing anger in the workplace. Our project originally aimed to extend findings on White women's, Black women's, and White men's workplace anger by examining whether evaluations are exacerbated or buffered by invalidating or affirming comments from others. In stark contrast to previous research on gender stereotyping and anger evaluations, however, results across four studies (N = 1,095) showed that both Black and White women portrayed as experiencing anger in the workplace were evaluated more favorably than White men doing so. After Study 1's initial failure to conceptually replicate, we investigated whether perceivers' evaluations of women's workplace anger could have been affected by the contemporaneous cultural event of #MeToo. Supporting this possibility, we found evaluations were moderated by news engagement and beliefs that workplace opportunities are gendered. Additionally, we found invalidating comments rarely affected evaluations of a protagonist yet affirming comments tended to favorably affect evaluations. Overall, findings suggest the need for psychologists to consider the temporary, or perhaps lasting, effects of cultural events on research outcomes.

Workplace Anger Costs Women Irrespective of Race

The current research investigated the role that a person's race, gender, and emotional expressions play in workplace evaluations of their competence and status. Previous research demonstrates that women who express anger in the workplace are penalized, whereas men are not, and may even be rewarded. Workplace sanctions against angry women are often attributed to a backlash resulting from the violation of gender stereotypes. However, gender stereotypes may differ by race. The present study addressed this question using a between-subjects experimental design where participants (N = 630) read a vignette describing a new employee, which varied with respect to the employee's race (White, Black, Asian, and Latino/a/x), gender (male and female), and a prior emotional response (anger and sadness). Participants then evaluated the employee's competence and status. Findings revealed that men and women were both viewed as more competent when expressing anger relative to sadness, and this pattern did not differ across employee race. However, despite anger being associated with greater competence, women who violated stereotypes (i.e., expressed anger) were accorded lower status than stereotype-inconsistent (sad) men. Furthermore, exploratory analyses revealed that this pattern was consistent regardless of target and participant race. The current study replicates and extends previous research by employing an intersectional perspective and using a large, ethnically diverse sample to explore the interaction between gender and emotional expression on workplace evaluations across races.

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

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.

Toward an Integrative Psychometric Model of Emotions

Emotions are part and parcel of the human condition, but their nature is debated. Three broad classes of theories about the nature of emotions can be distinguished: affect-program theories, constructionist theories, and appraisal theories. Integrating these broad classes of theories into a unifying theory is challenging. An integrative psychometric model of emotions can inform such a theory because psychometric models are intertwined with theoretical perspectives about constructs. To identify an integrative psychometric model, we delineate properties of emotions stated by emotion theories and investigate whether psychometric models account for these properties. Specifically, an integrative psychometric model of emotions should allow (a) identifying distinct emotions (central in affect-program theories), (b) between- and within-person variations of emotions (central in constructionist theories), and (c) causal relationships between emotion components (central in appraisal theories). Evidence suggests that the popular reflective and formative latent variable models-in which emotions are conceptualized as unobservable causes or consequences of emotion components-cannot account for all properties. Conversely, a psychometric network model-in which emotions are conceptualized as systems of causally interacting emotion components-accounts for all properties. The psychometric network model thus constitutes an integrative psychometric model of emotions, facilitating progress toward a unifying theory.

The Impact of Non-normative Displays of Emotion in the Workplace: How Inappropriateness Shapes the Interpersonal Outcomes of Emotional Displays

When it comes to evaluating emotions as either “good” or “bad,” everyday beliefs regarding emotions rely mostly on their hedonic features—does the emotion feel good to the person experiencing the emotion? However, emotions are not only felt inwardly; they are also displayed outwardly, and others’ responses to an emotional display can produce asymmetric outcomes (i.e., even emotions that feel good to the displayer can lead to negative outcomes for the displayer and others). Focusing on organizational settings, this manuscript reviews the literature on the outcomes of emotional expressions and argues that the evidence points to perceived (in)appropriateness of emotional displays as key to their consequences: emotional displays that are deemed inappropriate generate disadvantageous outcomes for the displayer, and at times also the organization. Drawing on relevant theoretical models [Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, the Dual Threshold Model of Anger, and Asymmetrical Outcomes of Emotions], the paper highlights three broad and interrelated reasons why emotion displays could be deemed unfitting and inappropriate: (1) characteristics of the displayer (e.g., status, gender); (2) characteristics of the display (e.g., intensity, mode); and (3) characteristics of the context (e.g., national or organizational culture, topic of interaction). The review focuses on three different emotions—anger, sadness, and happiness—which differ in their valence based on how they feel to the displayer, but can yield different interpersonal outcomes. In conclusion, the paper argues that inappropriateness must be judged separately from whether an emotional display is civil (i.e., polite and courteous) or uncivil (i.e., rude, discourteous, and offensive). Testable propositions are presented, as well as suggested future research directions.

The price of wearing (or not wearing) the crown: The effects of loneliness on leaders and followers

Loneliness has become a complex, ubiquitous problem in organizations. We review the research on loneliness in leader and follower roles and develop propositions related to understanding loneliness in organizational settings. Utilizing critical perspectives on leadership to better understand this phenomenon, we propose that loneliness is more emergent when leaders are either new to the leadership role or enact more “transformational,” “transactional,” or “authentic” leadership behaviors. Our analysis sheds light on the dark side of these popular leadership theories, especially with respect to the lack of development of high-quality relationships—and the resultant loneliness of both leaders and followers—in organizations stewarded by such leaders. We discuss implications and suggestions for future research.

How emotions influence alliance relationships: The potential functionality of negative emotions

This article utilizes a motivational perspective on emotions to reconceptualize the impact of negative emotions on relationship dynamics between alliance partners. Alliance failure is endemic and yet we know little about how alliance partners manage the interface between them. We draw upon the alliance discrepancy model, self-discrepancy theory, appraisal theory, emotions as social information theory, and Horney’s behavioral typology of moving toward, moving against, or moving away to analyze the emotional, motivational, and behavioral dynamics among alliance decision makers. We propose that process discrepancies predominantly produce agitation-related emotions such as anger and anxiety, whereas outcome discrepancies predominantly produce dejection-related emotions such as sadness and disappointment. We analyze the impact of emotions at both the intrapersonal and the interpersonal levels. The intrapersonal level captures the impact of alliance decision makers’ experienced emotions on their own behavior, whereas the interpersonal level captures the impact of alliance decision makers’ expressed emotions on their partners’ behavior. At the intrapersonal level, agitation-related emotions lead alliance decision makers to move against (or away from) their partner, whereas dejection-related emotions lead them to move toward their partner. At the interpersonal level, the expression of dejection-related emotions leads alliance decision makers to move toward their partner, whereas the expression of agitation-related emotions leads alliance partners to either move toward or against their partner depending upon the relative power of the parties and the specific agitation emotion that is expressed. We develop a series of propositions linking discrepancies with emotions and alliance management, which highlight a different way of thinking about emotions in alliances. Rather than treating negative emotions as destructive forces, our model points to the potential functionality of the experience and expression of negative emotions in alliances. We conclude by outlining some boundary conditions of our model and discussing implications for research and practice.

Mind-Body Dissonance: A Catalyst to Creativity

Mind-body dissonance (MBD) is the psychological experience of one's bodily expressions contradicting one's mental states. Across four experiments (total N = 887), the current research proposes and demonstrates that MBD can enhance creativity by facilitating an atypicality mind-set. First, two different instantiations of MBD (i.e., assuming a high-power/low-power role while adopting a constricted/expansive posture, or recalling a happy/sad memory while frowning/smiling) increased performance on creative association, insight, and generation tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). A third study showed that an atypicality mind-set was an underlying mechanism for the creativity effect (Experiment 3). Finally, the frequency of past MBD experiences was found to reduce MBD's creativity effect (Experiment 4). The present research offers evidence for the positive functions of bodily expressions that contradict mental states and highlights the significance of understanding the interactive effects of psychological states and their physical analogues in studying creativity.

Climbing the ladder or falling from grace? A threat-opportunity framework of the effects of norm violations on social rank

'Social norms keep anarchy at bay, yet norm violations are omnipresent. Although norm violators are generally rejected from higher-ranking positions, they sometimes rise up the ranks. We advance a threat-opportunity framework to understand how contextual factors shape norm violators' downward or upward mobility in social hierarchies. The contextual factors we identify pertain to attributes of the actor (violator), the observer, and the cultural context, which influence whether norm violations are construed as threats or opportunities. Norm violators rise up when their actions promote group goals, but they fall from grace when their actions obstruct observers' own interests or culturally reinforced goals. We offer a review of the literature, which supports the threat-opportunity framework. We close by suggesting future research directions.