THE STRENGTH OF ANGER THE EFFECT OF PEAK ANGER ON PERSUASION

Abstract

The influence of emotions on persuasion has become an increasingly popular topic in the scientific community. With the increase of attention for the influence of emotions, scholars have urged to look at the peak display of an emotion instead of the average display of an emotion. This research answers this call by looking at the peak display of anger by the Top Management Team (TMT) on the persuasiveness of the TMT in board meetings of the Dutch water authorities. It is hypothesised that the peak display of anger by the TMT positively impacts the persuasion of the TMT. Additionally, it is expected that board meeting frequency has a negative impact on this relation. The results show that the peak display of anger actually has a negative influence on the persuasion of the TMT. No evidence was found that meeting frequency has an influence on this relationship. The findings of this research show that the display of emotion is an influential factor in board meeting dynamics. Furthermore, for the measurement of anger an AI algorithm was used which showed to be an improvement on the conventional measurement tools and could be deemed as an interesting prospect for future research.