This study extended Tiedens’ (2000) theory on the link
between feelings of anger and guilt and perceptions of promotion opportunities
in organizations. The study combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of
data collected from 76 employees in 2 high-tech firms in Israel. Participants read a short vignette about 2 characters in a business context who failed to
perform a task. In reaction to the failure one character was described as
feeling angry and the other as feeling guilty. Participants were first asked to
choose who of the two characters they thought would be promoted in the
organization. Then they were asked to answer 4 open ended questions regarding
their viewpoint and attributions to the two characters. The results confirmed the prediction that more
participants thought the angry character would be promoted. An interesting
gender difference was found. Male participants were more likely to perceive
that the angry character would be promoted while female participants were more
likely to report that the guilty character would be promoted. The
analysis of the qualitative responses revealed that as expected the character
described as feeling guilty was more likely to be attributed internal
responsibility for the failure - the responsibility was attributed to him or
her, while the character described as feeling angry was attributed external
responsibility - the responsibility for the failure was attributed to someone
else. Contrary to expectations responsibility attributions were not found to be
related to perceived promotion. Also in contrast to expectations there was no
significant difference between the competence attributions to the character
described as feeling guilty and the character described as feeling angry.
