Anger
Anger
is an emotion related to one's psychological interpretation of having been
offended, wronged, or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation. Sheila
Videbeck describes anger as a normal emotion that involves a strong
uncomfortable and emotional response to a perceived provocation. Raymond Novaco
of UC Irvine, who since 1975 has published a plethora of literature on the
subject, stratified anger into three modalities: cognitive (appraisals),
somatic-affective (tension and agitations), and behavioral (withdrawal and
antagonism). William DeFoore, an anger-management writer, described anger as a
pressure cooker: we can only apply pressure against our anger for a certain
amount of time until it explodes.
Anger
may have physical correlates such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, and
levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Some view anger as part of the fight or
flight brain response to the perceived threat of harm. Anger becomes the
predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person
makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening
behavior of another outside force. The English term originally comes from the
term anger of Old Norse language. Anger can have many physical and mental
consequences.
The
external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language,
physiological responses, and at times in public acts of aggression. Humans and
animals for example make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare
their teeth, and stare. The behaviors associated with anger are designed to warn
aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. Rarely does a physical
altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the
participants. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a
result of "what has happened to them," psychologists point out that an angry
person can very well be mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring
capacity and objective observability.
Modern
psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced
by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for
survival. Anger can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action.
Uncontrolled anger can, however, negatively affect personal or social
well-being. While many philosophers and writers have warned against the
spontaneous and uncontrolled fits of anger, there has been disagreement over the
intrinsic value of anger. The issue of dealing with anger has been written about
since the times of the earliest philosophers, but modern psychologists, in
contrast to earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible harmful effects
of suppressing anger. Displays of anger can be used as a manipulation strategy
for social influence
Psychology and
sociology
The Anger of Achilles, by Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo depicts the Greek hero attacking Agamemnon.
Three types of
anger are recognized by psychologists: The first form of anger, named "hasty and
sudden anger" by Joseph Butler, an 18th-century English bishop, is connected to
the impulse for self-preservation. It is shared between humans and non-human
animals and occurs when tormented or trapped. The second type of anger is named
"settled and deliberate" anger and is a reaction to perceived deliberate harm or
unfair treatment by others. These two forms of anger are episodic. The third
type of anger is called dispositional and is related more to character traits
than to instincts or cognitions. Irritability, sullenness and churlishness are
examples of the last form of anger.
Anger can
potentially mobilize psychological resources and boost determination toward
correction of wrong behaviors, promotion of social justice, communication of
negative sentiment and redress of grievances. It can also facilitate patience.
On the other hand, anger can be destructive when it does not find its
appropriate outlet in expression. Anger, in its strong form, impairs one's
ability to process information and to exert cognitive control over their
behavior. An angry person may lose his/her objectivity, empathy, prudence or
thoughtfulness and may cause harm to others. There is a sharp distinction
between anger and aggression (verbal or physical, direct or indirect) even
though they mutually influence each other. While anger can activate aggression
or increase its probability or intensity, it is neither a necessary nor a
sufficient condition for aggression.
In modern
society
The words annoyance and rage are often imagined to be at
opposite ends of an emotional continuum: mild irritation and annoyance at the
low end and fury or murderous rage at the high end. The two are inextricably
linked in the English language with one referring to the other in most
dictionary definitions. Recently, Sue Parker Hall has challenged this idea; she
conceptualizes anger as a positive, pure and constructive emotion, that is
always respectful of others; it is only ever used to protect the self on
physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions in relationships. She
argues that anger originates at age 18 months to 3 years to provide the
motivation and energy for the individuation developmental stage whereby a child
begins to separate from their carers and assert their differences. Anger emerges
at the same time as thinking is developing therefore it is always possible to
access cognitive abilities and feel anger at the same
time.
Parker Hall
proposes that it is not anger that is problematic but rage, a different
phenomenon entirely; rage is conceptualized as a pre-verbal, pre-cognition,
psychological defense mechanism which originates in earliest infancy as a
response to the trauma experienced when the infant's environment fails to meet
their needs. Rage is construed as an attempt to summon help by an infant who
experiences terror and whose very survival feels under threat. The infant cannot
manage the overwhelming emotions that are activated and need a caring other to
attune to them, to accurately assess what their needs are, to comfort and soothe
them. If they receive sufficient support in this way, infants eventually learn
to process their own emotions.
Rage
problems are conceptualized as "the inability to process emotions or life's
experiences" either because the capacity to regulate emotion (Schore, 1994) has
never been sufficiently developed or because it has been temporarily lost due to
more recent trauma. Rage is understood as "a whole load of different feelings
trying to get out at once" (Harvey, 2004) or as raw, undifferentiated emotions,
that spill out when another life event that cannot be processed, no matter how
trivial, puts more stress on the organism than it can
bear.
Framing rage
in this way has implications for working therapeutically with individuals with
such difficulties. If rage is accepted as a pre-verbal, pre-cognitive phenomenon
(and sufferers describe it colloquially as "losing the plot") then it follows
that cognitive strategies, eliciting commitments to behave differently or
educational programs (the most common forms of interventions in the UK
presently) are contra-indicated. Parker Hall proposes an empathic therapeutic
relationship to support clients to develop or recover their organismic capacity
(Rogers, 1951) to process their often multitude of traumas (unprocessed life
events). This approach is a critique of the dominant anger and rage
interventions in the UK including probation, prison and psychology models, which
she argues does not address rage at a deep enough
level.
Symptoms
Passive
anger
Passive
anger can be expressed in the following ways:
Dispassion, such as giving
someone the cold shoulder or a fake smile, looking unconcerned or "sitting on
the fence" while others sort things out, dampening feelings with substance
abuse, overreacting, oversleeping, not responding to another's anger, frigidity,
indulging in sexual practices that depress spontaneity and make objects of
participants, giving inordinate amounts of time to machines, objects or
intellectual pursuits, talking of frustrations but showing no
feeling.
Evasiveness, such as turning one's back in a crisis, avoiding
conflict, not arguing back, becoming phobic.
Defeatism, such as setting
yourself and others up for failure, choosing unreliable people to depend on,
being accident prone, underachieving, sexual impotence, expressing frustration
at insignificant things but ignoring serious ones.
Obsessive behavior, such
as needing to be inordinately clean and tidy, making a habit of constantly
checking things, over-dieting or overeating, demanding that all jobs be done
perfectly.
Psychological manipulation, such as provoking people to
aggression and then patronizing them, provoking aggression but staying on the
sidelines, emotional blackmail, false tearfulness, feigning illness, sabotaging
relationships, using sexual provocation, using a third party to convey negative
feelings, withholding money or resources.
Secretive behavior, such as
stockpiling resentments that are expressed behind people's backs, giving the
silent treatment or under the breath mutterings, avoiding eye contact, putting
people down, gossiping, anonymous complaints, poison pen letters, stealing, and
conning.
Self-blame, such as apologizing too often, being overly critical,
inviting criticism.
Self-sacrifice, such as being overly helpful, making do
with second best, quietly making long-suffering signs but refusing help, or
lapping up gratefulness.
Aggressive
anger
The symptoms
of aggressive anger are:
Bullying, such as threatening people directly,
persecuting, pushing or shoving, using power to oppress, shouting, driving
someone off the road, playing on people's weaknesses.
Destructiveness, such
as destroying objects, harming animals, destroying a relationship, reckless
driving, substance abuse.
Grandiosity, such as showing off, expressing
mistrust, not delegating, being a sore loser, wanting center stage all the time,
not listening, talking over people's heads, expecting kiss and make-up sessions
to solve problems.
Hurtfulness, such as physical violence, including sexual
abuse and rape, verbal abuse, biased or vulgar jokes, breaking a confidence,
using foul language, ignoring people's feelings, willfully discriminating,
blaming, punishing people for unwarranted deeds, labeling others.
Manic
behavior, such as speaking too fast, walking too fast, working too much and
expecting others to fit in, driving too fast, reckless
spending.
Selfishness, such as ignoring others' needs, not responding to
requests for help, queue jumping.
Threats, such as frightening people by
saying how one could harm them, their property or their prospects, finger
pointing, fist shaking, wearing clothes or symbols associated with violent
behaviour, tailgating, excessively blowing a car horn, slamming
doors.
Unjust blaming, such as accusing other people for one's own mistakes,
blaming people for your own feelings, making general
accusations.
Unpredictability, such as explosive rages over minor
frustrations, attacking indiscriminately, dispensing unjust punishment,
inflicting harm on others for the sake of it, using alcohol and drugs, illogical
arguments.
Vengeance, such as being over-punitive, refusing to forgive and
forget, bringing up hurtful memories from the past.
Six
dimensions of anger expression
Of course,
anger expression can take on many more styles than passive or aggressive. Ephrem
Fernandez has identified six bipolar dimensions of anger expression. They relate
to the direction of anger, its locus, reaction, modality, impulsivity, and
objective. Coordinates on each of these dimensions can be connected to generate
a profile of a person's anger expression style. Among the many profiles that are
theoretically possible in this system, are the familiar profile of the person
with explosive anger, profile of the person with repressive anger, profile of
the passive aggressive person, and the profile of constructive anger
expression.
Causes
People feel
angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended,
when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when
they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still
influence the situation or cope with it. For instance, if a person's car is
damaged, they will feel angry if someone else did it (e.g. another driver
rear-ended it), but will feel sadness instead if it was caused by situational
forces (e.g. a hailstorm) or guilt and shame if they were personally responsible
(e.g. she crashed into a wall out of momentary
carelessness).
Usually,
those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of "what has happened
to them" and in most cases the described provocations occur immediately before
the anger experience. Such explanations confirm the illusion that anger has a
discrete external cause. The angry person usually finds the cause of their anger
in an intentional, personal, and controllable aspect of another person's
behavior. This explanation, however, is based on the intuitions of the angry
person who experiences a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective
observability as a result of their emotion. Anger can be of multicausal origin,
some of which may be remote events, but people rarely find more than one cause
for their anger. According to Novaco, "Anger experiences are embedded or nested
within an environmental-temporal context. Disturbances that may not have
involved anger at the outset leave residues that are not readily recognized but
that operate as a lingering backdrop for focal provocations (of anger)."
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, an internal infection can cause pain which
in turn can activate anger.
Cognitive
effects
Anger makes
people think more optimistically. Dangers seem smaller, actions seem less risky,
ventures seem more likely to succeed,unfortunate events seem less likely. Angry
people are more likely to make risky decisions, and make more optimistic risk
assessments. In one study, test subjects primed to feel angry felt less likely
to suffer heart disease, and more likely to receive a pay raise, compared to
fearful people. This tendency can manifest in retrospective thinking as well: in
a 2005 study, angry subjects said they thought the risks of terrorism in the
year following 9/11 in retrospect were low, compared to what the fearful and
neutral subjects thought.
In
inter-group relationships, anger makes people think in more negative and
prejudiced terms about outsiders. Anger makes people less trusting, and slower
to attribute good qualities to outsiders.
When a group
is in conflict with a rival group, it will feel more anger if it is the
politically stronger group and less anger when it is the
weaker.
Unlike other
negative emotions like sadness and fear, angry people are more likely to
demonstrate correspondence bias - the tendency to blame a person's behavior more
on his nature than on his circumstances. They tend to rely more on stereotypes,
and pay less attention to details and more attention to the superficial. In this
regard, anger is unlike other "negative" emotions such as sadness and fear,
which promote analytical thinking.
An angry
person tends to anticipate other events that might cause him anger. She/he will
tend to rate anger-causing events (e.g. being sold a faulty car) as more likely
than sad events (e.g. a good friend moving away).
A person who
is angry tends to place more blame on another person for his misery. This can
create a feedback, as this extra blame can make the angry man angrier still, so
he in turn places yet more blame on the other person.
When people
are in a certain emotional state, they tend to pay more attention to, or
remember, things that are charged with the same emotion; so it is with anger.
For instance, if you are trying to persuade someone that a tax increase is
necessary, if the person is currently feeling angry you would do better to use
an argument that elicits anger ("more criminals will escape justice") than, say,
an argument that elicits sadness ("there will be fewer welfare benefits for
disabled children"). Also, unlike other negative emotions, which focus attention
on all negative events, anger only focuses attention on anger-causing
events.
Anger can
make a person more desiring of an object to which his anger is tied. In a 2010
Dutch study, test subjects were primed to feel anger or fear by being shown an
image of an angry or fearful face, and then were shown an image of a random
object. When subjects were made to feel angry, they expressed more desire to
possess that object than subjects who had been primed to feel
fear.
As a
strategy
As with any
emotion, the display of anger can be feigned or exaggerated. Studies by
Hochschild and Sutton have shown that the show of anger is likely to be an
effective manipulation strategy in order to change and design attitudes. Anger
is a distinct strategy of social influence and its use (i.e. belligerent
behaviors) as a goal achievement mechanism proves to be a successful
strategy.
Larissa
Tiedens, known for her studies of anger, claimed that expression of feelings
would cause a powerful influence not only on the perception of the expresser but
also on their power position in the society. She studied the correlation between
anger expression and social influence perception. Previous researchers, such as
Keating, 1985 have found that people with angry face expression were perceived
as powerful and as in a high social position. Similarly, Tiedens et al. have
revealed that people who compared scenarios involving an angry and a sad
character, attributed a higher social status to the angry character. Tiedens
examined in her study whether anger expression promotes status attribution. In
other words, whether anger contributes to perceptions or legitimization of
others' behaviors. Her findings clearly indicated that participants who were
exposed to either an angry or a sad person were inclined to express support for
the angry person rather than for a sad one. In addition, it was found that a
reason for that decision originates from the fact that the person expressing
anger was perceived as an ability owner, and was attributed a certain social
status accordingly.
Showing
anger during a negotiation may increase the ability of the anger expresser to
succeed in negotiation. A study by Tiedens et al. indicated that the anger
expressers were perceived as stubborn, dominant and powerful. In addition, it
was found that people were inclined to easily give up to those who were
perceived by them as powerful and stubborn, rather than soft and submissive.
Based on these findings Sinaceur and Tiedens have found that people conceded
more to the angry side rather than for the non-angry
one.
A question
raised by Van Kleef et al. based on these findings was whether expression of
emotion influences others, since it is known that people use emotional
information to conclude about others' limits and match their demands in
negotiation accordingly. Van Kleef et al. wanted to explore whether people give
up more easily to an angry opponent or to a happy opponent. Findings revealed
that participants tended to be more flexible toward an angry opponent compared
with a happy opponent. These results strengthen the argument that participants
analyze the opponent's emotion to conclude about their limits and carry out
their decisions accordingly
is an emotion related to one's psychological interpretation of having been
offended, wronged, or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation. Sheila
Videbeck describes anger as a normal emotion that involves a strong
uncomfortable and emotional response to a perceived provocation. Raymond Novaco
of UC Irvine, who since 1975 has published a plethora of literature on the
subject, stratified anger into three modalities: cognitive (appraisals),
somatic-affective (tension and agitations), and behavioral (withdrawal and
antagonism). William DeFoore, an anger-management writer, described anger as a
pressure cooker: we can only apply pressure against our anger for a certain
amount of time until it explodes.
Anger
may have physical correlates such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, and
levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Some view anger as part of the fight or
flight brain response to the perceived threat of harm. Anger becomes the
predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person
makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening
behavior of another outside force. The English term originally comes from the
term anger of Old Norse language. Anger can have many physical and mental
consequences.
The
external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language,
physiological responses, and at times in public acts of aggression. Humans and
animals for example make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare
their teeth, and stare. The behaviors associated with anger are designed to warn
aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. Rarely does a physical
altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the
participants. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a
result of "what has happened to them," psychologists point out that an angry
person can very well be mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring
capacity and objective observability.
Modern
psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced
by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for
survival. Anger can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action.
Uncontrolled anger can, however, negatively affect personal or social
well-being. While many philosophers and writers have warned against the
spontaneous and uncontrolled fits of anger, there has been disagreement over the
intrinsic value of anger. The issue of dealing with anger has been written about
since the times of the earliest philosophers, but modern psychologists, in
contrast to earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible harmful effects
of suppressing anger. Displays of anger can be used as a manipulation strategy
for social influence
Psychology and
sociology
The Anger of Achilles, by Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo depicts the Greek hero attacking Agamemnon.
Three types of
anger are recognized by psychologists: The first form of anger, named "hasty and
sudden anger" by Joseph Butler, an 18th-century English bishop, is connected to
the impulse for self-preservation. It is shared between humans and non-human
animals and occurs when tormented or trapped. The second type of anger is named
"settled and deliberate" anger and is a reaction to perceived deliberate harm or
unfair treatment by others. These two forms of anger are episodic. The third
type of anger is called dispositional and is related more to character traits
than to instincts or cognitions. Irritability, sullenness and churlishness are
examples of the last form of anger.
Anger can
potentially mobilize psychological resources and boost determination toward
correction of wrong behaviors, promotion of social justice, communication of
negative sentiment and redress of grievances. It can also facilitate patience.
On the other hand, anger can be destructive when it does not find its
appropriate outlet in expression. Anger, in its strong form, impairs one's
ability to process information and to exert cognitive control over their
behavior. An angry person may lose his/her objectivity, empathy, prudence or
thoughtfulness and may cause harm to others. There is a sharp distinction
between anger and aggression (verbal or physical, direct or indirect) even
though they mutually influence each other. While anger can activate aggression
or increase its probability or intensity, it is neither a necessary nor a
sufficient condition for aggression.
In modern
society
The words annoyance and rage are often imagined to be at
opposite ends of an emotional continuum: mild irritation and annoyance at the
low end and fury or murderous rage at the high end. The two are inextricably
linked in the English language with one referring to the other in most
dictionary definitions. Recently, Sue Parker Hall has challenged this idea; she
conceptualizes anger as a positive, pure and constructive emotion, that is
always respectful of others; it is only ever used to protect the self on
physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions in relationships. She
argues that anger originates at age 18 months to 3 years to provide the
motivation and energy for the individuation developmental stage whereby a child
begins to separate from their carers and assert their differences. Anger emerges
at the same time as thinking is developing therefore it is always possible to
access cognitive abilities and feel anger at the same
time.
Parker Hall
proposes that it is not anger that is problematic but rage, a different
phenomenon entirely; rage is conceptualized as a pre-verbal, pre-cognition,
psychological defense mechanism which originates in earliest infancy as a
response to the trauma experienced when the infant's environment fails to meet
their needs. Rage is construed as an attempt to summon help by an infant who
experiences terror and whose very survival feels under threat. The infant cannot
manage the overwhelming emotions that are activated and need a caring other to
attune to them, to accurately assess what their needs are, to comfort and soothe
them. If they receive sufficient support in this way, infants eventually learn
to process their own emotions.
Rage
problems are conceptualized as "the inability to process emotions or life's
experiences" either because the capacity to regulate emotion (Schore, 1994) has
never been sufficiently developed or because it has been temporarily lost due to
more recent trauma. Rage is understood as "a whole load of different feelings
trying to get out at once" (Harvey, 2004) or as raw, undifferentiated emotions,
that spill out when another life event that cannot be processed, no matter how
trivial, puts more stress on the organism than it can
bear.
Framing rage
in this way has implications for working therapeutically with individuals with
such difficulties. If rage is accepted as a pre-verbal, pre-cognitive phenomenon
(and sufferers describe it colloquially as "losing the plot") then it follows
that cognitive strategies, eliciting commitments to behave differently or
educational programs (the most common forms of interventions in the UK
presently) are contra-indicated. Parker Hall proposes an empathic therapeutic
relationship to support clients to develop or recover their organismic capacity
(Rogers, 1951) to process their often multitude of traumas (unprocessed life
events). This approach is a critique of the dominant anger and rage
interventions in the UK including probation, prison and psychology models, which
she argues does not address rage at a deep enough
level.
Symptoms
Passive
anger
Passive
anger can be expressed in the following ways:
Dispassion, such as giving
someone the cold shoulder or a fake smile, looking unconcerned or "sitting on
the fence" while others sort things out, dampening feelings with substance
abuse, overreacting, oversleeping, not responding to another's anger, frigidity,
indulging in sexual practices that depress spontaneity and make objects of
participants, giving inordinate amounts of time to machines, objects or
intellectual pursuits, talking of frustrations but showing no
feeling.
Evasiveness, such as turning one's back in a crisis, avoiding
conflict, not arguing back, becoming phobic.
Defeatism, such as setting
yourself and others up for failure, choosing unreliable people to depend on,
being accident prone, underachieving, sexual impotence, expressing frustration
at insignificant things but ignoring serious ones.
Obsessive behavior, such
as needing to be inordinately clean and tidy, making a habit of constantly
checking things, over-dieting or overeating, demanding that all jobs be done
perfectly.
Psychological manipulation, such as provoking people to
aggression and then patronizing them, provoking aggression but staying on the
sidelines, emotional blackmail, false tearfulness, feigning illness, sabotaging
relationships, using sexual provocation, using a third party to convey negative
feelings, withholding money or resources.
Secretive behavior, such as
stockpiling resentments that are expressed behind people's backs, giving the
silent treatment or under the breath mutterings, avoiding eye contact, putting
people down, gossiping, anonymous complaints, poison pen letters, stealing, and
conning.
Self-blame, such as apologizing too often, being overly critical,
inviting criticism.
Self-sacrifice, such as being overly helpful, making do
with second best, quietly making long-suffering signs but refusing help, or
lapping up gratefulness.
Aggressive
anger
The symptoms
of aggressive anger are:
Bullying, such as threatening people directly,
persecuting, pushing or shoving, using power to oppress, shouting, driving
someone off the road, playing on people's weaknesses.
Destructiveness, such
as destroying objects, harming animals, destroying a relationship, reckless
driving, substance abuse.
Grandiosity, such as showing off, expressing
mistrust, not delegating, being a sore loser, wanting center stage all the time,
not listening, talking over people's heads, expecting kiss and make-up sessions
to solve problems.
Hurtfulness, such as physical violence, including sexual
abuse and rape, verbal abuse, biased or vulgar jokes, breaking a confidence,
using foul language, ignoring people's feelings, willfully discriminating,
blaming, punishing people for unwarranted deeds, labeling others.
Manic
behavior, such as speaking too fast, walking too fast, working too much and
expecting others to fit in, driving too fast, reckless
spending.
Selfishness, such as ignoring others' needs, not responding to
requests for help, queue jumping.
Threats, such as frightening people by
saying how one could harm them, their property or their prospects, finger
pointing, fist shaking, wearing clothes or symbols associated with violent
behaviour, tailgating, excessively blowing a car horn, slamming
doors.
Unjust blaming, such as accusing other people for one's own mistakes,
blaming people for your own feelings, making general
accusations.
Unpredictability, such as explosive rages over minor
frustrations, attacking indiscriminately, dispensing unjust punishment,
inflicting harm on others for the sake of it, using alcohol and drugs, illogical
arguments.
Vengeance, such as being over-punitive, refusing to forgive and
forget, bringing up hurtful memories from the past.
Six
dimensions of anger expression
Of course,
anger expression can take on many more styles than passive or aggressive. Ephrem
Fernandez has identified six bipolar dimensions of anger expression. They relate
to the direction of anger, its locus, reaction, modality, impulsivity, and
objective. Coordinates on each of these dimensions can be connected to generate
a profile of a person's anger expression style. Among the many profiles that are
theoretically possible in this system, are the familiar profile of the person
with explosive anger, profile of the person with repressive anger, profile of
the passive aggressive person, and the profile of constructive anger
expression.
Causes
People feel
angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended,
when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when
they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still
influence the situation or cope with it. For instance, if a person's car is
damaged, they will feel angry if someone else did it (e.g. another driver
rear-ended it), but will feel sadness instead if it was caused by situational
forces (e.g. a hailstorm) or guilt and shame if they were personally responsible
(e.g. she crashed into a wall out of momentary
carelessness).
Usually,
those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of "what has happened
to them" and in most cases the described provocations occur immediately before
the anger experience. Such explanations confirm the illusion that anger has a
discrete external cause. The angry person usually finds the cause of their anger
in an intentional, personal, and controllable aspect of another person's
behavior. This explanation, however, is based on the intuitions of the angry
person who experiences a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective
observability as a result of their emotion. Anger can be of multicausal origin,
some of which may be remote events, but people rarely find more than one cause
for their anger. According to Novaco, "Anger experiences are embedded or nested
within an environmental-temporal context. Disturbances that may not have
involved anger at the outset leave residues that are not readily recognized but
that operate as a lingering backdrop for focal provocations (of anger)."
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, an internal infection can cause pain which
in turn can activate anger.
Cognitive
effects
Anger makes
people think more optimistically. Dangers seem smaller, actions seem less risky,
ventures seem more likely to succeed,unfortunate events seem less likely. Angry
people are more likely to make risky decisions, and make more optimistic risk
assessments. In one study, test subjects primed to feel angry felt less likely
to suffer heart disease, and more likely to receive a pay raise, compared to
fearful people. This tendency can manifest in retrospective thinking as well: in
a 2005 study, angry subjects said they thought the risks of terrorism in the
year following 9/11 in retrospect were low, compared to what the fearful and
neutral subjects thought.
In
inter-group relationships, anger makes people think in more negative and
prejudiced terms about outsiders. Anger makes people less trusting, and slower
to attribute good qualities to outsiders.
When a group
is in conflict with a rival group, it will feel more anger if it is the
politically stronger group and less anger when it is the
weaker.
Unlike other
negative emotions like sadness and fear, angry people are more likely to
demonstrate correspondence bias - the tendency to blame a person's behavior more
on his nature than on his circumstances. They tend to rely more on stereotypes,
and pay less attention to details and more attention to the superficial. In this
regard, anger is unlike other "negative" emotions such as sadness and fear,
which promote analytical thinking.
An angry
person tends to anticipate other events that might cause him anger. She/he will
tend to rate anger-causing events (e.g. being sold a faulty car) as more likely
than sad events (e.g. a good friend moving away).
A person who
is angry tends to place more blame on another person for his misery. This can
create a feedback, as this extra blame can make the angry man angrier still, so
he in turn places yet more blame on the other person.
When people
are in a certain emotional state, they tend to pay more attention to, or
remember, things that are charged with the same emotion; so it is with anger.
For instance, if you are trying to persuade someone that a tax increase is
necessary, if the person is currently feeling angry you would do better to use
an argument that elicits anger ("more criminals will escape justice") than, say,
an argument that elicits sadness ("there will be fewer welfare benefits for
disabled children"). Also, unlike other negative emotions, which focus attention
on all negative events, anger only focuses attention on anger-causing
events.
Anger can
make a person more desiring of an object to which his anger is tied. In a 2010
Dutch study, test subjects were primed to feel anger or fear by being shown an
image of an angry or fearful face, and then were shown an image of a random
object. When subjects were made to feel angry, they expressed more desire to
possess that object than subjects who had been primed to feel
fear.
As a
strategy
As with any
emotion, the display of anger can be feigned or exaggerated. Studies by
Hochschild and Sutton have shown that the show of anger is likely to be an
effective manipulation strategy in order to change and design attitudes. Anger
is a distinct strategy of social influence and its use (i.e. belligerent
behaviors) as a goal achievement mechanism proves to be a successful
strategy.
Larissa
Tiedens, known for her studies of anger, claimed that expression of feelings
would cause a powerful influence not only on the perception of the expresser but
also on their power position in the society. She studied the correlation between
anger expression and social influence perception. Previous researchers, such as
Keating, 1985 have found that people with angry face expression were perceived
as powerful and as in a high social position. Similarly, Tiedens et al. have
revealed that people who compared scenarios involving an angry and a sad
character, attributed a higher social status to the angry character. Tiedens
examined in her study whether anger expression promotes status attribution. In
other words, whether anger contributes to perceptions or legitimization of
others' behaviors. Her findings clearly indicated that participants who were
exposed to either an angry or a sad person were inclined to express support for
the angry person rather than for a sad one. In addition, it was found that a
reason for that decision originates from the fact that the person expressing
anger was perceived as an ability owner, and was attributed a certain social
status accordingly.
Showing
anger during a negotiation may increase the ability of the anger expresser to
succeed in negotiation. A study by Tiedens et al. indicated that the anger
expressers were perceived as stubborn, dominant and powerful. In addition, it
was found that people were inclined to easily give up to those who were
perceived by them as powerful and stubborn, rather than soft and submissive.
Based on these findings Sinaceur and Tiedens have found that people conceded
more to the angry side rather than for the non-angry
one.
A question
raised by Van Kleef et al. based on these findings was whether expression of
emotion influences others, since it is known that people use emotional
information to conclude about others' limits and match their demands in
negotiation accordingly. Van Kleef et al. wanted to explore whether people give
up more easily to an angry opponent or to a happy opponent. Findings revealed
that participants tended to be more flexible toward an angry opponent compared
with a happy opponent. These results strengthen the argument that participants
analyze the opponent's emotion to conclude about their limits and carry out
their decisions accordingly
