1. Introduction

As women develop in the workplace, the issue of promotion and management in the female workplace is gradually becoming an increasingly compelling topic. Emotional expression in the workplace has both negative and positive effects on women's career development.

In terms of relevance, addressing the issue of bias toward emotional expression due to gender stereotypes and differences in gender expectations in the female workplace can help us improve women's career development.

This paper will address the issue of emotional expression in the workplace through a literature review. The paper will be broadly divided into five sections. The first part of the article defines what is emotional expression in the workplace, the second part describes what effects emotional expression in the workplace can have, and the third part of the article focuses on the antecedent variables of emotional expression in the workplace. The fourth part of the article will summarize how to intervene in the expectation and cognitive bias of emotional expression in the workplace caused by gender stereotypes. Finally, the fifth part of the article will summarize and discuss the limitations of this study as well as directions for future research.

2. Emotional Expression in the Workplace

2.1. Definition of Emotional Expression in the Workplace

Emotional expression refers to individuals communicating and displaying their emotional states through speech, facial expressions, body language, voice, and graphic expressions [1-4]. These emotions can include anger, happiness, sadness, anxiety, etc. [1-4].

Emotional expression in the workplace specifically refers to the work environment, individuals and colleagues of the same level, subordinates, leaders, etc., for the content of the work, personal performance, interpersonal communication in the display of emotions.

Emotional expression has an important role in the workplace environment, which can affect the individual self, the relationship between the individual and others, job performance, organizational climate, and leadership [5]. First, emotional expression in the workplace can help individuals to establish emotional connection and empathy with others, and enhance communication and cooperation [6]. By expressing emotions, individuals can make their needs, feelings, and positions known to others, thus facilitating more effective collaboration and problem solving [7]. Second, emotional expression can also serve as an important component of organizational culture and climate. Sun Juncai (2005) and others found that emotional expression in the workplace can enhance employees' self-achievement and job satisfaction by enabling them to feel praise, rewards, respect, and opportunities for advancement from the organization [8]. A good culture of emotional expression can promote positive emotions and work motivation among employees and enhance organizational cohesion and creativity. Finally, emotional expression has an impact on employee performance in the workplace. Emotional expression in the workplace tends to elicit behavioral responses that expect cooperation and improved performance when employees have the motivation and ability to process information thoroughly and view emotional expression as appropriate [7].

To sum up, emotional expression in the workplace refers to the emotions displayed in the work environment by individuals and colleagues of the same level, subordinates, leaders, etc., in response to the content of the work, personal performance, and interpersonal communication, which is of great significance in influencing the individual self, the relationship between individuals and others, work performance, organizational climate and leadership, and so on.

2.2. Two Common Types of Emotional Expression in the Workplace

Researchers can categorize the expression of emotions in the workplace into two main types: negative emotions and positive emotions.

Among the negative emotions, "anger", as one of the basic emotions, is one of the most perceived negative emotions in the workplace [9]. Researchers have recently focused on the consequences of anger episodes in the workplace [10], where employees may express negative emotions, such as anger or frustration, when faced with stress and frustration. The effectiveness of this expression of negative emotions depends on the observer's ability and motivation to process the information and perceive the expression. When the observer is able to fully understand the employee's emotions and perceive them as appropriate, such negative emotional expressions may elicit sympathetic and supportive responses. Conversely, if the observer is unable to understand the employee's emotions or perceives the expression as inappropriate, such negative emotional expressions may elicit negative responses, such as loss of trust or criticism [7].

In terms of positive emotions, confidence and contentment are common expressions. When employees feel confident and content, they may express positive emotions such as pride or satisfaction. This expression of positive emotions can promote teamwork and personal fulfillment in the workplace [11].

Therefore, the effectiveness of workplace emotional expression does not depend only on the nature of the emotion itself, but also on the understanding and perception of the observer, as well as the motivation and culture in the work environment. Understanding the influencing factors of workplace emotional expression helps us to better manage and cope with the expression of different emotions, thus enhancing teamwork and work effectiveness.

3. What Are the Effects of Emotional Expression in the Workplace?

Emotional expression has a wide range of impacts in the workplace, involving personal, coworker, psychological, and professional development.

Impact on the individual: emotional expression can have a direct impact on the individual. Positive emotional expressions (e.g., pleasure, excitement) can increase an individual's expectancy motivation and conditioning to handle tasks, which may contribute to increased productivity, creativity, and job satisfaction [12]. Negative emotional expressions, on the other hand, may, for example, anger lead to increased blood pressure [13], decreased job satisfaction [14], and negatively affect individual employees' physiological well-being and job performance.

Impact on coworkers: emotional expression has a significant impact on relationships between coworkers. Positive emotional expression promotes collaboration, communication, and teamwork, and enhances feelings of intimacy and trust among coworkers, which contributes to a positive work climate and good interpersonal relationships [6]. On the contrary, negative emotional expression may individuals alienated from their external environment, receive less social support, have poorer interpersonal relationships [15], and undermine teamwork and productivity.

Impact on mental health: emotional expression has a direct impact on an individual's mental health. Negative emotional expression may lead to a negative accumulation of emotions and an increase in psychological stress, increasing the risk of mental health problems [16].

Impact on career development: emotional expression also affects an individual's career development. Positive emotional expression, Chen Huanhuan et al. [17] showed that more proactive work is generated when employees feel proud, which enhances individual job performance. Susanna Jiang [18] and Hu Yu et al. [19] showed that anger expression can lead to a decrease in individual job performance, resulting in employees in the workplace will be counterproductive behavior and increased willingness to leave, which is not conducive to the progression of personal career development.

Overall, emotional expression has a wide range of implications in the workplace, involving personal, coworker, psychological, and professional development. The traditional "symmetry assumption" that positive emotional expressions have positive impacts and negative emotional expressions have negative impacts has been common in the field [20]. However, as scholars gradually delve deeper into the study, more controversy has emerged from this research. On the one hand, it is believed that emotions expressed in different scenarios produce different effects. For example, Ma Xueqian et al. [21] argued that under specific conditions in the workplace, negative emotion expression plays a positive role in employee performance, such as when the leader expresses a negative emotion, the employee's performance in completing analytical tasks is significantly higher than when the leader expresses a neutral or positive emotion. On the other hand, gender produces inconsistent effects on emotional expression in the workplace. Ma Xueqian et al. [21] argued that in male-dominated cultures, leaders expressing anger can significantly contribute to employee performance, whereas it may not be as significant when women express anger. Gibson et al. [22] also found that women's expression of anger was associated with less positive organizational outcomes. Tiedens (2000) found that, compared to males who expressed sadness, men who expressed anger men gained more power, status, and independence at work. However, Brescoll & Uhlmann [23] found that anger did not increase women's status as much as it did for men. Specifically, a series of experiments showed that female targets who exhibited very mild anger were perceived to be less competent, employed, and had power, status, and independence at work compared to male targets who exhibited the same anger. To summarize, the symmetric and reversed hypotheses still require further clarification of the conditions for their application in specific contexts.

4. Antecedent Variables

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on the plight of women in career development, (gender stereotypes shape managerial behaviors and career prospects in the workplace with patriarchal expectations that negatively impact women's opportunities for career development [24]. It has been found in research that women are more vulnerable to gender discrimination and professional inequality in the workplace this may have a negative impact on their emotional expression and career development [25].

4.1. The Impact of Emotional Expression in the Workplace on Women's Career Development is the Subject of Attention in This Paper

In general, in the work environment, women may be penalized for minor or moderate displays of emotion, especially when the emotion displayed conveys dominance, such as anger or pride [26-28]. At the leader level, Schaubroeck and Shao's [29] study found that male leaders were more likely to increase employee performance by expressing anger than female leaders, while female leaders were more likely to increase employee performance by expressing sadness.

4.2. Why Is There a Negative Impact?

Stereotype

Gender Stereotypes are cognitive shortcuts that affect the way people process information related to both genders, stereotyping the general expectations of what men and women should do and how they should behave [30]. Gender stereotyping exists regardless of the position a female holds in an organization and is more pronounced when it comes to management or leadership positions [24]. Men are perceived as confident, objective, and emotionally controlled in the workplace [31]; while women are perceived as friendly, empathetic [32], vulnerable, and emotional in the workplace [11].

Gender affects people's judgment of emotional intensity. Research has found that emotional expression in the workplace can lead to cognitive biases in gender, which may be due to gender stereotypes. Barrett & Bliss-Moreau [33] used a mixed male and female facial expression experiment to experimentally confirm the existence of gender stereotypes: observers were able to be more objective and make judgments based on existing personal information when the sex of the subject was not known, and there was no significant difference in predictions for males and females. When the sex of the subject is known, the observers' predictions are consistent with gender stereotypes, and there is a significant difference between the predictions for males and females. The experiment illustrates that people's gender role expectations and stereotypes lead to biased evaluations, which serve as a particular barrier to women's access to career advancement. Men are perceived to control their emotions and "intervene in situations," but women are perceived to be unable to "keep their cool," and are therefore confused and disoriented by events. Women's emotional expression in the workplace has an impact on the perception of women in dealing with events due to stereotypes and other reasons [11]. This influence leads to the fact that women often need to restrain and hide their emotional expression in the workplace in order to conform to society's expectations of women [11].

Across situations, the social expectations for women's emotional expression are opposite to the expectations for men's, which are consistent. Often, the social expectations of women are opposite to the expectations people have of women in the expression of emotions in the workplace. Social contexts assume that women should express positive emotions to others [34-35], as well as share their negative emotions with others to communicate their vulnerability [36]. When a woman is in an employment setting, and especially when she assumes a leadership role in that setting, she may experience a mismatch between the emotional expectations of her as a woman and the emotional expectations of her as a leader. Research has found that leadership roles are perceived to carry with them not only high expectations of emotional control, but also the expectation that a leader will demonstrate beliefs that reflect her beliefs about her own abilities, such as pride and pride in her personal accomplishments; and that she is worthy of exercising power and control over others, such as demonstrating anger toward a negligent subordinate [37]. Previous research has focused more on female leaders, but this expectation may actually generalize to female workers, thereby affecting the emotional expression of all women in the workplace. This opposing societal expectation may cause women to experience more emotional discomfort and psychological stress [16], negatively impacting their career development. Men, however, whose default expression is not to express emotions that convey their vulnerability or powerlessness, conform to society's impression of male emotional expression [11].

Particularly for the expression of anger in the workplace, the differences in expectations between genders are particularly pronounced. Research has shown that women's expression of anger presents different effects on status-giving performance in the workplace (e.g., assessment of competence, room for job advancement, etc.) compared to men. Women tend to be negatively evaluated and assigned lower status in the workplace when they express emotions such as anger or assertiveness. Using empirical research methods, past scholars have found that women's expression of anger when not interfered with, women are given lower status than angry men. When the effect of female position was excluded, female expression of anger was attributed to internal loss of control and the effect was significant. When an external cause explanation is added, it relatively improves the performance and bias of female anger expression in terms of status conferred in the workplace, but only to the level of what it is when men have no emotional expression [23] This may all be attributed to the creation of emotional stereotypes. And gender emotional stereotypes, research scholars, divide the bias factors against female professionals into two categories emotional stability and emotional control, emotional stability i.e., high self-esteem, feelings are not easily hurt, emotional stability, consistency, calmness; rapid recovery from emotional distress and stabilization of rationality (or emotional control) i.e., logical, able to separate feelings from thoughts, unemotional, self-control, objective. People observers often attribute women's emotional expression in the workplace to their emotional stability and emotional control, e.g., when women experience anger due to someone else's mistakes, observers will assume that women's lack of emotional stability and control is the result, thus affecting judgments about women's ability to do their jobs [23].

5. Stereotype Formation and Intervention

Cognitive: Individuals' cognitive processes often tend to simplify and categorize information, and we typically perceive the world in terms of stereotypes [25]. Our stereotype expectations activate specific brain areas that help us recognize interpret and remember what we see, hear and learn about others [38]. By determining what catches our attention, what information seems valuable, and what should be remembered, stereotypes often form a very powerful filter through which we process objective information about men and women [39].

Gender stereotypes are generalized, one-sided and fixed perceptions and expectations of men and women. They are often based on social and cultural factors and can have a negative impact on individuals and society. Communication is a very important factor in the formation of gender stereotypes. Individuals' communication can also affect their gender stereotypes [25]. Through gender roles and behaviors in parent-child interactions in the family, media, and emotional expressions, individuals may form stereotypes about gender.

First, the interactions between parents and children in the home may create gender stereotypes. In the way they raise and educate their children, parents may implicitly teach them what is appropriate behavior for women and men. Even parents who may consciously avoid buying gendered toys and claim to treat their sons and daughters equally may communicate these implicit expectations, for example, when reading picture books with their children. They communicate behaviors and activities they believe are appropriate for boys and girls by making more positive comments about images of children engaged in gender-stereotyped activities [40].

In addition, media representations reinforce stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. One study showed that over time, gender stereotypes implicitly conveyed in media representations influenced girls' perceptions of gender roles, bodies, and sexual relationships [41]. An experimental study further found that college students who were induced to play video games in gendered female roles exhibited decreased self-efficacy as a result of this experience [42].

Finally, male and female emotional expression can also reinforce gender stereotypes. Research has shown that males and females tend to experience similar emotions. However, they express emotions differently, with males expressing all negative emotions as anger, while females are more likely to express sadness, which is associated with a lack of control over the situation [43].

Intervention Approach:

Individual Awareness and Self-Reflection: Individual awareness and self-reflection are key to reducing gender stereotypes. Individuals should be aware of their tendency to stereotype gender and work to challenge and correct their gender biases.

Education and awareness: Education is one of the most important ways to change gender stereotypes. By providing accurate knowledge of gender, the importance of gender equality and the negative effects of gender stereotypes, it can help people to recognize the existence of gender stereotypes and promote the idea of gender equality and diversity.

Media and advocacy: The media play an important role in shaping and disseminating gender stereotypes. By reflecting on and changing stereotypical portrayals and roles of gender in the media, it is possible to help reduce the formation and spread of gender stereotypes. News, cartoons, emoji CSR

Leadership modeling and organizational culture: Leadership modeling and organizational culture are also important for intervening in gender stereotypes. Leaders should demonstrate an equal and inclusive gender perspective and promote gender equality through organizational culture and policies.

These two approaches have been used in previous research to intervene in the formation of stereotypes and to reduce the impact of negative stereotypes. One is cross-categorization, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen [44] argued that everyone has multiple different social identities, and each social identity will have both positively stereotyped and negatively stereotyped identities by the socio-cultural positive stereotypes, Zhang Baoshan et al. [45] who argued that the "providing multiple social identities " intervention strategy highlights the individual's autonomous choice of multiple social identities and has an intervention effect against situations that initiate negatively stereotyped identity traits. The other type of intervention policy is schema-based. People have different social schemas, and Taylor and Crocker [46] have classified social schemas into four categories: self-schemas, person-schemas, role-schemas, and time-schemas. Zhang Baoshan et al. [45] argued that each category of schema can be specifically refined, for example, role schema has specific behavioral mental frameworks for different roles (police, doctors, students, teachers). Schema-based intervention strategies start from cognitive switching, based on individuals having multiple cognitive schema structures, focusing on controlling various types of information in stereotype threat situations, for example, providing multiple types of information for stereotype threat groups to choose from, so as to achieve cognitive switching between different cognitions of stereotype threat with different schema structures, thus weakening the threat effect. However, the current study has not found any evidence of the actual impact of the promotion of various intervention strategies.

In conclusion, the formation of and intervention in gender stereotypes is a complex process involving factors at the social, cultural, psychological and individual levels. Integrated interventions through education, media, exposure, leadership modeling and individual awareness can help to reduce the impact of gender stereotypes and promote the achievement of gender equality and diversity.

6. Prospects for Future Research

6.1. How to Break and Improve Women's Career Development Against Stereotypes

Although in this study, it was investigated that stereotypes lead to women's emotional expression in the workplace will have an impact, but the current study mainly focuses on the phenomenon of the research analysis, the lack of analysis of the mechanism and path of the impact, such as self-efficacy may be used as one of the moderating factors [47], the future research can be in-depth discussion of the formation of stereotypes and breaking of stereotypes on women's career development. In addition, research could focus on the inconsistency between social expectations and individual women's self-identity [48] and explore how women cope with this inconsistency. Research could also explore how women regulate emotional relief from expectations and the impact of this emotional relief on career development. In addition, research could be considered on how to provide social support and resources, and in terms of targeting anti-gender stereotypical behaviors, Meiser [49] found that group membership and behavioral traits can play a large role in maintaining gender stereotypes under the influence of socio-environmental factors. Yang Qiuyan et al. [50] believe that society and organizations should praise and publicize those outstanding female leaders and cadres, improve the social environment for women's career development, and help women overcome the limitations of stereotypes in order to promote their career development.

6.2. How to Further Refine the Research for Emotional Expression

Future research could further refine the study of women's emotional expression. Research could explore what emotions should be displayed from the perspective of women's self-development, what intensity of emotions should be displayed, and how emotions can be displayed to achieve career development. For example, research could explore the appropriateness of the emotions of confidence and pride in different career scenarios. At the same time, research could delve into the expression of anger, including the appropriate amount and manner of expression of anger. Further breaking down the different scenarios, the study could explore under what circumstances it is more appropriate to express anger, and how to balance the individual's emotions and the need for career development when expressing anger. In addition, research could explore how to objectively measure the intensity of emotions in order to more accurately understand the relationship between external emotional expression and internal emotions. Currently, emotional expression focuses on anger and pride, but there is still a lack of research on other types of emotions (e.g., frustration, sadness, happiness) and other methods of emotion regulation (e.g., emotion suppression).

Future research could also consider exploring differences in emotional expression across cultures and social contexts. Expectations and norms for emotional expression may differ across cultures (e.g., collectivism vs. individualism, East Asian vs. Western cultures), and thus research could compare the characteristics and impact of women's emotional expression across cultures. In addition, research can explore cross-cultural adaptation of emotional expression to help women better demonstrate appropriate emotional expression in cross-cultural professional settings.

To summarize, future research can further delve into the mechanism of stereotypes' influence on women's career development and refine the study of emotional expression in order to promote women's equality and development in the career field.