Angry women are often dismissed
A study confirms what everybody already knew: women can’t win.
Angry men are strong and forceful, while angry women are often dismissed as overly emotional. That double standard has been alleged for years now, with plenty of anecdotal evidence to back it up.
A newly published study featuring a mock jury not only supports that assertion: It takes it a step further, suggesting women’s anger may actually be counterproductive. It finds that, while men who express anger are more likely to influence their peers, the opposite is true for women.
Well that’s annoying.
Oh dear, I just made it worse.
“Our results lend scientific support to a frequent claim voiced by women, sometimes dismissed as paranoia,” conclude psychologists Jessica Salerno of Arizona State University and Liana Peter-Hagene of the University of Illinois–Chicago. They suggest the belief “that people would have listened to her impassioned argument, had she been a man” is, in many cases, valid.
They did a study via a mock-trial experiment on computer screens. There was one holdout on the jury, who spoke neutrally or with fear or with anger. The holdout could be male or female.
“Participants became more confident in their own opinion after learning they were in the majority,” the researchers report. “But (they) then started doubting their own opinion significantly after the male holdout expressed anger.”
In contrast, “when a female holdout expressed anger, participants became significantly more confident in their own opinion over the course of deliberation.”
This dynamic—which held true for both male and female participants—meant that “men were able to exert more social pressure by expressing anger,” whereas women actually lost influence when they did the same thing.
Huh. So I’ve been writing this often-irritated blog for more than 14 years now, losing influence all the time. Seems a bit futile, doesn’t it.
I think the research is correct. I noticed long ago that women are not listened to at industrial tribunals if they get angry. On the other hand if they remain too calm and collected, especially in a sexual harassment case, that can count againt them too. It’s a matter of dammed if you do and damned if you don’t.
I wonder if the angry men and women were scripted the same.
This study just explained something to me in a flash of insight.
I work in a job that involves advocating for people in vulnerable positions. My work includes a fair amount of public criticism of government and industry practices that exploit people. As you’d expect, much of what I say/write about it is direct and pretty tart.
Consistently over my career a predictable proportion of my colleagues—usually women—will tell me that I’m being “counterproductive,” that I’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar, or that “no one listens to angry people.” I’m gonna have to ask you to take on faith that a lot of what I say and write is not, in fact, angry, or if it is, it’s hardly what you’d call a temper tantrum (I do know how to switch voices for context). Sometimes the “don’t be so angry if you want to get your way” comments come after I simply state a fact without trying to sugar coat it or give my opponents an excessively generous benefit of the doubt.
Example: “Industry leaders should have to answer for the fact that they encourage their business colleagues to hide data, manipulate prices, and lie to consumers as a matter of standard operating practice. It’s shameful.”
I write things like that often. And they get me just as many “you’re too angry no one will listen to you” plaints as when I really let loose and go ballistic.
It’s usually women who say these things. If this research is right, and I think it is, it must be that the women are giving me advice they truly believe in. They’re coming from their own experience of having even their most mild complaints treated as out of bounds. They’re used to having to defer to hold onto what little power they have.
It’s totally understandable now. It’s still frustrating to me and it’s wrong-headed in context, but it’s understandable.
The fact is that, as a man socialized as a man, I already know that I’m “entitled” to say things a lot more forcefully. I already know from experience that it’s simply not true that quiet, deferential simpering will accomplish my policy goals. But for women who’ve experienced nothing like that, you can’t wonder why they’d react that way.
Does this seem plausible?
Josh – that sounds right on to me. I hear that a lot, too, as a woman. I am told not to be blunt, not to be direct. My mother taught me (though I don’t think it took) that the way a woman gets her own way is by making the man think it’s his idea. My mother had a lot of good (and a lot of bad) ideas in her day; she never implemented them directly. She manipulated my dad until he believed it was his idea, and then it could be put into practice with good (or disastrous) results. My dad would never listen to any idea she had, so she learned how to get things done.
This is a message a lot of women have been given, and some have managed to incorporate it better than I have. I have found that in meetings including both women and men, the men speak, the women listen. If the women speak, they are then sent out to make coffee. Or they are given some sort of message that it is not their turn. Eventually you begin to realize that it will never be your turn, at least not until you are reincarnated with the proper amount of testosterone. (And no, sex change wouldn’t work, because I grew up in Oklahoma where trans-men were not regarded as men but freaks. The same for trans-women).
And that catching flies with honey thing is always amusing to me. My answer to that? If you really want to catch flies, your best bet is dead meat.
Josh – ohh, yes, it does seem plausible.
I don’t (consciously) remember any explicit instructions to the effect that “girls mustn’t perform anger.” But 1. that doesn’t mean there were none and 2. the instructions of course could have been subtler than that.
On the other hand I think it’s pretty likely that I got a lighter dose than most girls, for various reasons, especially the fact that I went to a tiny girls’ school so there was zero social pressure from Teh Boiz.
(Why am I babbling about me? I guess to answer my internal question, why I don’t react to anger that way but still find your interpretation plausible.)
Anger is unavoidable by most people. If the world does not make you angry at least once a day then you are not paying attention. How you express that anger is a choice. Raised voice, domineering stance, aggressive choice of vocabulary generally lead me to conclude that you probably don’t have much of an argument.
Anger should motivate you to hone your argument and deliver it coldly and clearly.
Josh@3
Sounds totally plausible to me too, based on my own experience.
I was surprised though – I thought that this particular kind of coaching/policing (depending on the intent, which can vary, in my perception) in a professional setting was something women mostly only directed at other women. So it is interesting that you have experienced this many times. I wonder it this is something women direct at male colleagues in general more frequently than I had realised, or/and if there are particular characteristics a man can have that make this kind of attention more likely (ie. being generally reasonable, empathetic and insightful, as opposed to behaving like a callous macho boofhead)?
I wonder if men’s anger is more associated with violence. Male anger is subconsciously viewed as something that needs to be addressed, to be defused, to be respected/feared.
Women’s anger is viewed as just unpleasant/unsightly.
I sometimes wonder if there are more, violent undercurrents in our social interactions than we civilized folk care to admit. But we can’t address that without widespread admission that this is what goes on.
Teslalivia—-I don’t know how often men in the wider business/advocacy get this advice directed to them. I have a couple of educated guesses, but they’re only guesses:
1. I bet it happens to men more than you’ve noticed, but you’d have no reason to notice it.
2. I work in the nonprofit/human services advocacy world, which has a higher proportion of women than men. Many more of my colleagues, close and far flung, are women than you would find in a typical corporate office. I’d bet you that people working in the nonprofit world get this a whole lot more. Also because the nonprofit world is full of do-gooders, and in large general ways, their disposition tends to be more accommodating and welcoming (sometimes to the point of self-defeating naviete).
3. I’m out and gay, so it’s possible that some unconscious assumptions about gay men—-that we’re more empathetic, or that we show traits more commonly associated with women—may be in play. I mean, I think many women I have as friends or colleagues likely see me as (I say cautiously and hesitantly) more approachable, more “one of them” than they would a typical straight man.
4. Men have also made these remarks to me about my putative “non-constructive” direct attitude. Those men tend to be the ones that have more stereotypically “feminine” traits. They tend to be more likely to be human services type men, academics in the quiet and shy way, librarians, etc. Definitely not the hypermacho archetype of the Successful Businessman.
I have been told from time to time that I speak like a man but doing so seems to usually go in my favour. That said it’s usually being more direct and more forceful that does it. My fear is being dismissed as “emotional”, which seems rarely to be used against men who are angry and aggressive. I find anger can be effective when used judiciously, provided I am in control of it. Being upset can elicit sympathy but it also comes across as weak and makes it a lot harder to be taken seriously.
At family gatherings, I’ve noticed that it is female relatives who will usually try to shush anyone showing anger. It’s hard to tell whether this is gender biased because it’s mostly generational with the older ones policing the younger ones (and I mean younger adults, not children). In families women tend to be the peacemakers. Sometimes this is for the best but often it means that they sweep problems under the carpet rather than permit conflict. Growing up, I noticed this pattern a lot and not only in my own family.