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

Abstract

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.

Keywords: #MeToo; anger; cultural events; emotion; gender stereotyping; historical context; stereotypes; workplace.

Figure 1

An emotion storyboard used in Study 1a. To create a situation to examine stereotyping and invalidation, the protagonist’s dialogue, expressions, and self-labeling made the fact that they were angry unambiguous, yet the reason for the protagonist’s reassignment was intentionally ambiguous.

Figure 2

Moderated effects across Studies 1b, 2, and 3. Left panel depicts Study 1b simple slopes for appropriateness of emotion intensity (A) and dispositional emotionality (B) at levels of news engagement. Values on the y-axes and x-axes were on a scale of 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Value for news engagement one standard deviation below the mean: 3.46, value for news engagement one standard deviation above the mean: 6.22. Error bands indicate 95% confidence intervals. Results did not differ if covariates were included in analyses so simple slopes reported are from analyses without covariates. Middle panel depicts Study 2 simple slopes for appropriateness of emotion type (A), dispositional emotionality (B), and conferred status (C) at levels of beliefs in work opportunities as gendered (BWOG). Values on the y-axes and x-axes were on a scale of 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Value for BWOG one standard deviation below the mean: 3.37, value for BWOG one standard deviation above the mean: 6.43. Error bands indicate 95% confidence intervals. Right panel depicts Study 3 simple slopes for appropriateness of emotion type (A), appropriateness of emotion intensity (B), dispositional emotionality (C), and conferred status (D) at levels of beliefs in work opportunities as gendered (BWOG). Values on the y-axes and x-axes were on a scale of 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). Value for BWOG one standard deviation below the mean: 3.75, value for BWOG one standard deviation above the mean: 6.65. Error bands indicate 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 3

Revised panel for emotion storyboards used in Study 2.

Figure 4

Example of last panel change for emotion storyboards used in Study 3.