Noted without comment

Posted by Josh Rosenau on October 25, 2010
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I’m in DC doing meetings and stuff, so regular blogging will return later in the week. Meanwhile, via Ed Yong, a paper On Angry Leaders and Agreeable Followers, which finds:

[T]he two studies we conducted showed that agreeableness moderates the effects of a leader’s emotional displays. In a scenario study, participants with lower levels of agreeableness responded more favorably to an angry leader, whereas participants with higher levels of agreeableness responded more favorably to a neutral leader. In an experiment involving four-person teams, teams composed of participants with lower average levels of agreeableness performed better when their leader expressed anger, whereas teams composed of participants with higher average levels of agreeableness performed better when their leader expressed happiness.

Draw your own conclusions.

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Comments

  1. #1 ERV
    October 25, 2010

    Ive found having boobies helps.

    Im often described as ‘charming’ and ‘diplomatic’ irl, but when Im online and you *cant* see my boobies, Im ‘angry’ and ‘hateful’.

    I think this whole thing would be resolved with the addition of more boobies. So, get to eating that Halloween candy, Josh! MANOOBIES! YAY!!!

  2. #2 Deepak Shetty
    October 25, 2010

    The accomodationists are in trouble. they are distinctly unagreeable.

    Do followers perform better when their leader expresses anger or when their leader expresses happiness

    What if the leader happily expresses anger like PZ – possibly more and less agreeable people should both love him.

  3. #3 Barry
    October 26, 2010

    Josh: “Draw your own conclusions.”

    Is this what you do Josh? Find a paper that you think supports what you believe and then immediately “draw conclusions”?

    It’s a pity the study didn’t include variables to test for “being agreeable whilst being misleading” and “being angry whilst telling the truth” – now that would have been more relevant. I also note that the paper defines agreeableness as a “personality/behavioral” construct…which is fine…but didn’t stray into agreeableness in adopting and reflecting ideas of your corespondent.

    I’ll ignore the implication in posting this paper that accommodationists, by definition, are “agreeable, and NA are “angry”. Even though we know it isn’t so clear cut – http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2010/10/missing_the_point_1.php (see comments 36 and 37.

  4. #4 Jim Thomerson
    October 27, 2010

    We had a chair who often became angry (and often justifiably so). I noticed that he became less effective as time went by because people developed methods to make his anger ineffective. When I became chair, I decided that I would never be angry with a student or fellow faculty member, nor more often than once a year. I became angry only once in three years. I really enjoyed it. It was like I was a spectator cheering myself on. I left the person white and shaking without ever raising my voice, and was congratulated by my peers.