In Zurich, does expressing anger help in negotiations?
In Zurich's financial services, insurance, technology companies and European headquarters of international groups, disagreements often concern budgets, deadlines and contractual commitments. The managerial question is specific: does expressing anger help secure an agreement, or merely get the other person to give ground temporarily?
What the literature establishes
Gerben A. van Kleef, Carsten K. W. de Dreu and Antony S. R. Manstead (2004, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), in their study of anger and happiness in negotiations, demonstrate experimentally that an opponent's expressed emotion can change the concessions made to them. Under the conditions studied, participants facing an opponent expressing anger concede more than those facing an opponent expressing happiness. This finding concerns negotiating behaviour, not the enduring quality of the relationship.
Emotion as information about limits
In their second article, on motivated information processing, Gerben A. van Kleef, Carsten K. W. de Dreu and Antony S. R. Manstead (2004, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) clarify the conditions underlying this effect. Emotional expression can inform negotiators about the other party's perceived limits, but its influence depends on their motivation to process that information. Anger is therefore not an automatic lever: it is subject to interpretation.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that managers should display anger to defend their constraints. Yet these studies establish neither the superiority of this strategy over a clearly reasoned limit nor its benefit in an ongoing working relationship. Securing an immediate concession and building a sustainable agreement are distinct objectives. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence leaves unresolved
The experiments use structured negotiations and controlled emotional expressions; they do not reproduce the full relational history of a team or partnership. They are insufficient to predict the effects of anger expressed by a superior in a multilingual Zurich workplace. An agreement secured under pressure may also leave disagreements unspoken: that is a possibility to investigate, not a finding established here.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR's “Communication” programme, a Zurich team can compare two ways of expressing the same disagreement in a simulation: one conveying anger without personal attacks, the other calmly stating the limit, its rationale and room for negotiation. Using an identical scenario and randomly assigning the versions, record the concession offered, then ask participants individually whether they would negotiate with that person again. Comparing the proportion of agreements with the proportion of positive responses to another negotiation distinguishes two outcomes that are often conflated. This local test is a diagnostic exercise, not scientific validation or an invitation to provoke anger in real exchanges. To go further: explore the Communication training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Communication in Zurich
- communication
- Zurich
- research
- training zurich