The effects of leader negative emotions on evaluations of leadership in a crisis situation: The role of anger and sadness

While existing literature on leadership articulates the importance of leader emotion, there has been little attention to the potential roles of more specific emotions. Emotions such as anger and sadness have been linked to leaders in times of crisis. The current paper examined the effect of leader emotion on evaluations of leadership in the context of a failed product. In particular, we examined how the expression of anger and sadness influences the evaluation of leaders. Results revealed that a leader expressing sadness was evaluated more favorably than a leader expressing anger. We found that participants' emotion mediated the relationship between leaders' emotion and the evaluation of leaders. Furthermore, accepting responsibility for the crisis led to more favorable evaluations than not accepting responsibility. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.