ORIGINAL PAPER The influence of power and solidarity on emotional display rules at work James Diefendorff • Josh Morehart • Allison Gabriel Published online: 5 May 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract This study examined the influence of two interpersonal relationship dimensions, relative power and solidarity (closeness), on the emotional display rules that employees report they would adopt in work situations in which they felt happiness or anger. Results demonstrated that display rules involved more control over emotional expressions (i.e., more deamplification and masking of emotion and less expressing and amplification of emotion) when the interaction partner had higher relative power compared to when the interaction partner had equal or lower relative power. This pattern of results was present for both happiness and anger, though the effects were larger for anger. Display rules also involved more control when the interaction partner was low in solidarity compared to when the interaction partner was high in solidarity, with this effect being similar in magnitude for anger and happiness. Keywords Emotional display rules Á Power Á Solidarity Á Affect Ekman and Friesen (1975) described emotional display rules as indicating ‘‘the need to manage the appearance of particular emotions in particular situations’’ (p. 137). As such, display rules represent the conventions about the appropriateness of emotional displays in social situations (Matsumoto 1990). Matsumoto et al. (2005) recently demonstrated that display rules vary across a wide range of social situations. In organizational research, emotional display rules are often described as job requirements aimed at constraining and standardizing emotional expressions so as to meet broader organizational goals (Grandey 2000; Rafaeli and Sutton 1987). Display rule perceptions at work have been shown to predict job attitudes, emotional dis- plays, and the reporting of physical symptoms (Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Diefendorff et al. 2006; Grandey 2003; Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). Additionally, research has shown that display rule perceptions are influenced by a variety of factors, including demographics, personality, dispositional affect, supervisor expectations, and pace of the work (Brotheridge and Lee 2003; Diefendorff and Richard 2003; Diefendorff et al. 2006; Gosserand and Diefendorff 2005; Rafaeli and Sutton 1990; Schaubroeck and Jones 2000). While organizational research has typically treated dis- play rules as expectations that should be followed across interpersonal interactions (e.g., Brotheridge and Grandey 2002; Diefendorff et al. 2006), recent research has shown that display rules at work vary as a function of the work target with whom the person is interacting (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009). For instance, Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) found that display rules for interacting with coworkers involved less control over emotional expres- sions than display rules for interacting with supervisors and subordinates, while display rules for customer interactions involved the most control over expressions. Diefendorff and Richard (2008) argued that flexibly matching display rules to different social situations may facilitate interper- sonal effectiveness and the attainment of a variety of organizational goals (e.g., providing good customer ser- vice, managing others effectively, working well in a team context). While the work of Diefendorff and Greguras (2009) illustrated that display rules differ across work targets, it did not explain why these differences occurred. Drawing J. Diefendorff (&) Á J. Morehart Á A. Gabriel University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA e-mail: jdiefen@uakron.edu 123 Motiv Emot (2010) 34:120–132 DOI 10.1007/s11031-010-9167-8