Even though all of us may be able to identify happiness in people’s expressions clearly, and even though we may all experience happiness for similar, underlying reasons, it doesn’t mean that we all show our happiness the same way. This brings up the concept of emotional display rules. Our society and culture teach us when it’s okay to show how we feel and when it’s not. We learn these rules early in life, such as when little boys are told that “big boys don’t cry,” or when, feeling absolutely miserable, we tell our officemate that we’re doing “fine” in response to his daily greeting, “Hey, how ‘ya doing?”
Emotional display rules are a form of hidden knowledge. This is knowledge that we are aware of, but we’re not quite sure where we acquired it. Display rules vary from organization to organization. The creative culture of a New York advertising agency may encourage the display of joy, surprise, and interest, whereas a buttoned-down, Park Avenue law firm prides itself on its quiet restraint.
Cultures also have their own sets of emotional display rules.[29] When in France, we were initially surprised when our hosts kissed us goodbye—on both cheeks! That would not have gone over very well in the United States, but in France, it’s perfectly acceptable to express your feelings of happiness in this way. In the United States, we might simply smile and say a word of thanks. In Japan, a colleague may feel angry with you, but all you see on his face is a smile.
Closely linked to the notion of emotional display rules is the concept known as secondary emotions, or as they are called in some cases, self-conscious emotions. Unlike the basic emotions of anger, fear, and joy, these secondary emotions have a strong social or cultural component to them. Consider the feeling of embarrassment. We feel embarrassed when we commit some sort of faux pas, and we are “caught” by someone else. This general rule of embarrassment probably applies to all people and cultures, but what sets the emotion called embarrassment apart from its more basic colleagues is that the actions that bring on the feeling are tied to culture.
If you walk into a meeting of the board in mud-stained clothes, you might feel a bit embarrassed. But walk into your local garden center dressed that way to pick up a bundle of fertilizer, soil, and annuals, and you might not feel embarrassed at all. The context is the key. Different cultures have different social norms for behavior, and what is accepted in one environment may give rise to embarrassment in another. During our first stays in Japan, visiting our colleagues at EQ-Japan in Tokyo, for instance, both of us were at first a bit surprised when our genteel and polite hosts started loudly slurping their noodles at lunch. If one of us did that in a midtown Manhattan restaurant in front of a client, we’d be plenty embarrassed. In Tokyo, the norms are different, and so noodle slurping is not embarrassing to our Japanese colleagues. In contrast, we unknowingly embarrassed our Japanese hosts when we hugged them good-bye. And when we realized later what we had done, we too felt ashamed and embarrassed.
Gender has important effects on emotions and emotional intelligence. Our own work, for example, suggests that women may have a slight advantage in the hard skills of emotional intelligence.[30]
Even though women, as a group, may be more emotionally intelligent than men, women are devalued relative to men when they engage in certain leadership behaviors, even though they might be effective. For instance, it’s acceptable for us, as males, to be assertive and in-your-face at work. Our female counterparts, however, are perceived a lot differently when they act in an assertive manner. A female executive expressing happiness may be seen as being “typically female” and soft, whereas a guy can get away with his high-five in the hallway. Gender role norms in the workplace mean that what is acceptable for a male executive is not always acceptable for a female executive.[31]
In the remainder of this book, we explore emotional intelligence in depth and provide both an explanation of its importance and techniques for acquiring or improving one’s work and management style.
[29]Although there are strong cultural differences in acceptable social behavior, our focus is on the display of emotions.
[30]Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., and Salovey, P. “Emotional Intelligence Meets Traditional Standards for an Intelligence.” Intelligence, 1999, 27, 267–298.
[31]Eagly, A. H., Makhijani, M. G., and Klonsky, B. G. “Gender and the Evaluation of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin, 1992, 111, 3–22. See also Shields, S. A. Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.