When suppression is good and reappraisal is not: The boiling point of anger in a service encounter

Abstract

Research is still scarce regarding how cognitive appraisals of multiple service failure cues combine to generate customer anger in a service failure context, and the role of emotional regulation strategies (suppression and reappraisal) in mitigating this emotion. Using a vignette experimental method of a service failure situation with 971 participants, we show that appraisals of goal-blocking, other responsibility, and low control act jointly in an undifferentiated way to increase anger in a non-linear fashion and find that emotional suppression is beneficial for coping with anger in situations with multiple anger-evoking cues. Conversely, reappraisal is more effective when there are fewer anger-triggering cues. This result challenges the dominant view that reappraisal is preferable to suppression in coping with negative emotions.