WHY ANGRY MEN ARE MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN ANGRY WOMEN

 

CLOZE TEST

Read the text and complete the chart below with a word from the list that comes after the text. Every word can only be used ONCE. There are five words that you do not need to use. Question 0 has been answered as an example.

 

 

WHY ANGRY MEN ARE MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN ANGRY WOMEN

 

Jurors change their minds when guys fume

Righteous anger is one of Hollywood’s favorite devices for delineating an inspirational figure. Atticus Finch has it in To Kill A Mockingbird, Peter Finch’s newscaster has it in Network, Mr. Davis has it in 12 Angry Men and Liam Neeson has it in just about everything.

Angry women, not so inspirational.

It has never been clear whether it’s women’s anger that is the problem or the way women 0) __________ anger. Tears, heightened voices, jabbing fingers: are women just doing anger wrong? Now a new study suggests that female anger is simply less persuasive—to both men and women—no 1) __________ how it is expressed.

For the study, 210 undergraduates were on a computer-simulated jury with five 2) __________ jurors. They were shown arguments, testimony and photographic evidence in a case in which a man is accused of murdering his wife, and asked to 3) __________ a decision. They then interacted, through typed responses on a screen, with the other jurors as they talked about the case. Four of the jurors agreed with them and one didn’t. For some of the participants, that juror was furious, as communicated by a liberal use of the caps lock and exclamation keys.

4) __________ of the responses were from real people, however. They were pre-set into the computer program that the candidates were using. The angry juror’s name was either Alicia or Jason but her/his answers were always the same. At various stages 5) __________ the process, the study participants were asked how confident they felt about their decision.

The results were depressing. “After Jason started expressing 6) __________, people’s confidence in their opinion dropped,” says the study’s lead author Jessica Salerno, assistant professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, “but when Alicia expressed anger they grew 7) __________ confident.”

Jason’s passion led to 19% less confidence among participants in their opinion, on average. Alicia’s anger led to 13% more confidence in their opinion, on average.

In total about 7% of participants changed their 8) __________ during the course of the experiment. When the juror was not angry, that 7% was split between people who had been interacting with Jason or Alicia. But angry Jason got 18% of people to 9) __________ their verdict. Angry Alicia changed exactly zero people’s minds.

The female anger in this experiment was expressed in exactly the same way as the male anger: words on a screen, with phrases like “This is just really frustrating…” and precisely the same number of capitalized letters. So Salerno believes it’s simply the 10) __________ that was the problem.

Adapted from @luscombeland

DISPLAY                       EITHER                          MINDS                          OTHER

ANGER                         GENDER                        MORE                           OTHERS

ANOTHER                    MAKE                           NEITHER                       SWITCH

BOTH                            MATTER                       NONE                           THROUGHOUT

 

0. DISPLAY

 

KEY

 

1. MATTER
2. OTHER
3. MAKE
4. NONE
5. THROUGHOUT
6. ANGER
7. MORE
8. MINDS
9. SWITCH
10. GENDER

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