Yale Bulletin and Calendar

August 23-30, 1999

Volume 28, Number 1

Study finds undercurrent of anger in U.S. workplaces

In a one-week period recently, news headlines twice turned the nation's attention to the problem of workplace rage, as two individuals went on killing sprees in places they had been employed.

A study by two faculty members at the Yale School of Management has found that work-related anger, while not necessarily so extreme, is also not uncommon.

In fact, nearly 25 percent of respondents to a 1996 Gallup survey said they were "generally at least somewhat angry at work," according to assistant professor Donald Gibson and associate professor Sigal Barsade, coauthors of the study "The Experience of Anger at Work: Lessons from the Chronically Angry."

While the violence that led to the deaths of nine people in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 29 and three people in Pelham, Alabama, a week later could be a result of workplace rage, most workers who are angry express their resentment in far more subtle ways, according to Gibson. And managers need to pay attention to the signals employees are sending, he says.

"Our study has important implications for management," adds Barsade. "One is that they have to be aware that the workplace is not devoid of emotions. People don't check their emotions at the door. So managers need to look at the structure of the work they are assigning. If they are overworking their employees, for example, they can't just send them to
a stress-management workshop and expect the problem to be solved. They have to set up a workplace that people feel comfortable in."

Gibson and Barsade used data gathered through a Gallup telephone survey of 1,000 adults, age 18 or older, who were employed either full- or part-time. One quarter of those surveyed revealed that they were at least "somewhat" angry when asked "In general, how angry to you feel at work?"

According to the Yale SOM study, the most common cause of anger at work -- cited by 11 percent of the survey respondents -- was the actions of supervisors or managers. The second most cited causes for workplace anger included other coworkers or employees, others not being productive on the job, and tight deadlines or a heavy workload.

In spite of their angry feelings, most of the interviewed workers maintained a sense of responsibility to their employers, according to Gibson and Barsade. While angry workers may chose to do only the minimum amount of work required in their jobs, rather than putting in extra effort, these same workers did not indicate a purposeful desire to do low-quality work, the researchers say. However, these workers' chronic anger was related to their overall level of loyalty to the organization and the degree to which they felt they shared the same values with their employers.

"[C]hronic anger is associated with a sapping of energy and interest at work," write Gibson and Barsade in their study. "Moreover, related results suggest that the depressive tendencies related to chronic anger may have to do with 'feeling stuck' in one's job: the more difficult respondents expected it would be to find another job they would like, the higher their ratings of chronic anger."

Further research is needed on the causes and effects of workplace anger, say Gibson and Barsade.

"Understanding anger responses in the work setting is important for a variety of reasons," the Yale SOM faculty members wrote. "Most visibly, anger is linked to workplace aggression, which appears to be increasing: we are weekly confronted with stories of workers taking aggressive, even violent, action particularly against superiors. Even when feelings of anger do not result in overt aggression, as most do not, expressions of anger may lead to breaches in interpersonal relationships and a hostile work environment. More subtly, feeling and suppressing anger has been linked to health complaints, including anxiety, depression, job stress, heart disease and high blood pressure, and despite the mythology that 'releasing' anger is cathartic, research shows that expressing anger is also highly stress inducing."

Gibson and Barsade note in their study that some expression of anger by workers may, in fact, be "vital to effective management."

"Feelings of anger at the individual level are a signal that a wrong has been committed or that goals are being blocked," they write. "Expressions of anger between workers and workers toward 'management' as an entity suggest that a breach in interpersonal behavior or larger scale issues of fairness and justice have been violated, drawing attention to situations that may require managerial attention. Feeling and expressing anger, then, has been linked to both individual and organizational outcomes."

The SOM study was sponsored by Marlin Co., a Connecticut-based management consulting firm. Gibson and Barsade presented their findings recently at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago.

-- By Susan Gonzalez

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