The Anger Headband: Workplace Magic and Its Disenchantment

This study proposes the concept of the Anger Headband as a theoretical framework for explaining how anger becomes normalized, embodied, and reproduced within organizational culture. While previous research has examined workplace aggression through concepts such as abusive supervision, workplace bullying, and emotional labor, less attention has been paid to the cultural processes through which anger comes to be perceived as ordinary and is subsequently reproduced by newcomers. The Anger Headband employs the metaphor of visitors wearing character headbands in a theme park. Rather than viewing such accessories merely as personal preferences, this study interprets them as symbolic expressions of participation in a shared cultural space. Extending this metaphor to organizational settings, the study argues that anger may function not simply as an emotion but as a symbolic marker of belonging. Individuals do not imitate anger in isolation; instead, they gradually adopt locally accepted emotional practices as they become members of a particular workplace culture. To develop this framework, the study integrates theories of organizational culture, symbolic interaction, social construction, feeling rules, observational learning, conformity, social proof, and disenchantment. The proposed concept is further positioned alongside the author's previous theoretical models, including Ma-Meme (Multiple Anger Meme), Mamism, and Anger Ecology, while focusing specifically on the process through which individuals become socialized into these cultural systems. The study also introduces disenchantment as a cognitive process through which individuals reinterpret organizational culture after gaining distance from it through transfer, resignation, cross-organizational comparison, or long-term reflection. What once appeared to be common sense within the workplace may then become recognizable as a localized cultural norm. This shift enables individuals to move from cultural participants to structural observers. At the same time, such reinterpretation may threaten collectively maintained realities and provoke symbolic defensive responses, including forms of relational exclusion such as Silent Harassment. The Anger Headband is therefore not a theory that endorses or condemns anger itself. Rather, it provides a conceptual lens for asking whether a particular expression of anger originates from the individual or has been acquired through participation in a local organizational culture. Beyond workplace settings, the framework may also offer analytical value for examining cultural participation and emotional socialization in schools, healthcare organizations, public institutions, and cross-cultural contexts.