Gender e status in affects attributions at work: a brazil-spain intercultural study

Abstract

The article presents the partial results of a research on the influence of gender and professional status in the attributions of emotions and affects. 465 college students from Madrid and Salvador took part of the study: 279 males e 182 females, ages varying from 19 to 56. It was a factorial design of type 4 (Professional Status: supervisor/leader versus employee/associate) X 2 (gender: Male versus Female). We consider as preceeding variables the gender, the country, the major and the working condition of the surveyed. The data presented in this article refer to a question in which it was asked to the queried to choose one of a series of five pictures of actors expressing basic emotions which would reveal their predominant affects. The surveyed person would, then, write in the space below the photo which affect he/she thinks it was represented there. Some conclusions are indicated: i) the gender and status at work do have an influence on the attributions, confirming the hypothesis of the context’s clue; and ii) the photograph depicting happiness was picked more by supervisors rather than by employees, especially in regards to the Brazilian participants.