CHAPTER 5: ANGER

Resource Person: Sitara Kanwal

 WHAT IS ANGER?
• Anger can be described as the emotional state associated with feeling injured or
offended, with a desire to threaten or hurt the person who offended you.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_5DU5opOFk
• What elicits Anger??
• Anger poses an interesting problem for researchers, especially those who want to
study emotions in a laboratory or other controlled setting. Eliciting fear is easy: a
sudden, loud noise will do, a scary movie, or the threat of an electric shock. But
imagine trying to elicit anger, in a research laboratory, without overstepping ethical
limits. A sharp insult angers most people, but it often produces some combination of
fear, sadness, and embarrassment as well. So anger is more idiosyncratic— people
can be angered by very different kinds of events.
PROTOTYPICAL(IDEAL) ANGER SITUATIONS
• However, when the objective elicitors of an emotion vary as widely as they do in
anger, it is harder to identify their common theme. Although defining the
“prototypical” anger situation is not terribly difficult, we must also acknowledge that
people show anger in situations that do not fit that prototype well.

• Richard Lazarus (1991) defined the prototypical core relational theme eliciting anger
as a “demeaning offense against me and mine.” Consistent with this idea, many
studies find that anger arises against someone who has caused harm intentionally or
carelessly. If someone steps in front of you and knocks you off balance, your degree
of anger depends on why you think the person stepped in front of you. You probably
would not feel angry with a toddler or a blind person. You might become angry with
someone who had no apparent excuse for carelessness. You would become even
angrier if you thought someone was intentionally trying to block your way.
• In one study, American, European, and Asian students all reported anger most
strongly when someone treated them unfairly (Ohbuchi et al., 2004).
• In another study, people reported recent events in which things went badly for them.
They reported feeling anger only when they had someone to blame for their
misfortune (Kuppens, Van Mechelen, Smits, & De Boeck, 2003).
• Studies of appraisal from the Component Process Theory perspective find
compatible results. In the cross-cultural study of appraisal by Klaus Scherer (1997),
people said they usually felt angry in unexpected, unpleasant, and unfair situations
that interfered with their goals, and were caused by someone else. Participants also
described anger inducing situations as potentially changeable. An uncontrollable
bad situation elicits more sadness or fear than anger. it was really crucial for
situations evoking anger.
• Much research points to the importance of blame in anger, but the nature of this
relationship is unclear. So, does having someone to blame lead to anger? Or does
being angry make you look for someone to blame? Research suggests that the causal
arrow might go in both directions.
• The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqQW05iYE6g
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS00Hz3XDMc
 COGNITIVE-NEO ASSOCIATIONISTIC (CNA)
MODEL OF ANGER GENERATION

• According to Leonard Berkowitz’s (1990) Cognitive-Neoassociationistic (CNA) Model

of Anger Generation,

• “any unpleasant event or sensation facilitates anger and aggression.”

• The unpleasant thing might be frustration, but it could also be pain, an aversive odor,

or almost anything else. For example, the probability of aggression increases when

the weather is hot (Preti, Miotto, De Coppi, Petretto, & Carmelo, 2002), or when people

themselves feel uncomfortably hot (Anderson, 2001).

 HOW IT EVOKES ANGER?
• A variety of unpleasant feelings and experience of negative affect can lead to the

development of angry feelings and display of emotional aggression.

• Negative affect activates ideas, memories and expressive-motor reactions associated

with anger and aggression and basic angry feelings. Subsequent thoughts involving

attributions, appraisals and schematic conceptions can then intensify, suppress,

enrich, or differentiate the initial reactions. Bodily reactions as well as emotion-

relevant thoughts can activate the other components of the particular emotion

network to which they are linked.

 THE IMPACT OF CONTROL APPRAISALS
• Frustration, pain, and other kinds of discomfort often lead to anger and aggression,

but not always. According to Berkowitz (1990), if you think you are in danger and have

no control, fear will trump anger. The study by Scherer and Wallbott also emphasized

the importance of control appraisals in distinguishing anger from fear. For example,

you might react to an insult with either fear or anger, depending on who insulted you

(Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), and on the probable consequences if you

expressed your anger openly.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: WHAT ELICITS
ANGER?

• None of these theories has earned a consensus among researchers studying emotion.

On one hand,, by definition, includes cognition, feeling, physiological changes, and

actionif appraisal of blame is essential, we cannot explain why people become

hostile when they are in an unpleasant situation that is no one’s fault. On the other

hand, if an emotion, then an emotion without cognition (for instance, anger without

blame) is impossible, or at least incomplete (Clore & Centerbar, 2004; C. A. Smith &

Kirby, 2004).
 MEASURING ANGER & AGGRESSION

• As with any other emotion, research on anger is only as good as the methods of
measuring it. Much of the research on anger has focused on physical aggression,
mainly because aggression is observable and anger is not. We can measure it the
following ways:
• 1. Self-Reports of Anger
• The most widely used paper-and-pencil measure of anger is the Spiel berger State-
Trait Anger Expression Inventory, or STAXI
• 2. Facial Expression of Anger
• 3. Aggressive Behaviors
 AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS
• Researchers studying anger also observe aggressive behavior. In fact, that approach

is the only option when studying nonhuman animals. However, not all anger leads to

aggression and not all aggression begins with anger. Psychologists distinguish

between hostile and instrumental aggression.

• Hostile aggression is motivated by anger, with the specific intent to hurt someone.

Instrumental aggression is harmful or threatening behavior used purely as a way to

obtain something or achieve some end.

• Examples include bullying, theft, warfare, and killing prey. Much of human aggression

is instrumental.
 BIOLOGY OF ANGER & AGGRESSION
• Aggressive behavior is often impulsive, and one basis for impulsivity is damage to the

prefrontal cortex (Figure 8.4). People with known damage to certain parts of the prefrontal

cortex are impaired at suppressing their emotional expressions.

• People with a history of explosive outbursts of anger, including impulsive murderers,

show these same behavioral patterns, even if they have no known brain damage (Best,

Williams, & Coccaro, 2002; Davidson, Putnam, & Larson, 2000).The implication is that their

prefrontal cortex is intact, but may be less than normally active.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1fSzTiOzdA
 SEROTONIN
• One candidate is serotonin. Only a few clusters of neurons in the brainstem produce

serotonin, but their axons spread widely, influencing activity throughout most of the

brain.

• Laboratory research since the 1970s has demonstrated that rats and mice with low

levels of serotonin release are more likely to fight with one another (Saudou et al.,

1994; Valzelli, 1973; Valzelli & Bernasconi, 1979).

• Other studies found that monkeys with the lowest levels of serotonin metabolites in

the blood were the most likely to start fights, and to be victims of attacks
 TESTOSTERONE
• Testosterone plays a significant role in the arousal of these behavioral manifestations

in the brain centers involved in aggression and on the development of the muscular

system that enables their realization.

• There is evidence that testosterone levels are higher in individuals with aggressive

behavior, such as prisoners who have committed violent crimes.

• Several field studies have also shown that testosterone levels increase during the

aggressive phases of sports games.

 ANGER AND THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS
SYSTEM
• Anger also manifests itself in physiological arousal, such as heart rate and breathing

rate. The physiological state that accompanies anger closely resembles that for fear.

Other features of aggression are accounted for by effects of the adrenal gland.

• At the start of an aggressive attack, part of the hypothalamus sends messages that

increase the adrenal gland’s release of cortisol and other stress hormones. Those

hormones feed back to increase activity in the hypothalamus. Thus, at the start of a

fight, the arousal is self-sustaining and self-magnifying (Kruk, Halász, Meelis, & Haller,

2004). A common result is that your anger quickly increases when you are provoked.
 INDIVIDUAL AND SITUATIONAL
DIFFERENCES
• One of the most striking features of anger and aggression is that they vary so much.
Have you noticed that some people get angry more often than others?

• One is that violent behavior is a product of low self-esteem. According to this view,
people who see themselves as failures try to raise their own status by attacking
someone else.

• Aggression is also common among people who perceive other people’s actions as
hostile.

• Various attempts have been made to tie aggressive behavior to a particular gene.
Researchers have identified several genes that are somewhat more common among
people with a history of violence than in the general population
• Gender differences
• Family environment
• Watching Media Violence

• To summarize the factors predisposing to anger and aggressiveness: People may

vary in their predisposition to anger and aggression because of genetic factors and
prenatal environment, but even the influence of those factors depends on later
environment. The greatest probability of violence occurs in people from a troubled
family in a violent neighborhood who also had a biological predisposition. Exposure
to violence in the media increases the risk of aggressive behavior; again, the
influence is probably greater in those who were already predisposed for other
reasons.
 PREVENTION

• As human technology has developed the ability to make stronger and stronger

weapons, the need for violence control has increased accordingly.

• Reconciliation is an attempt to restore friendship after a fight and prevent further

hostility.

• Controlling Childhood Aggressive Behavior (through adult supervision & rules)

 CONTROLLING ANGER IN ADULTHOOD
• Cognitive restructuring.

• The person is taught to reinterpret events as less threatening or hostile, to replace anger-evoking
thoughts with calmer ones. For example, if another driver pulls into your lane without signaling,
the driver may have been thoughtless rather than deliberately insulting you.

• Social skills training.

• Conflict with other people is probably the major cause of anger, and one reason for conflict is
poor communication. Therapists try to teach people to identify when they are starting to get
angry, relax themselves, and calm down before speaking. They also try to get people to
communicate their needs more clearly to others, so that the others can meet those needs and
therefore provoke less anger.
• Distraction.

• When someone is starting to get angry, a good strategy is to think about something else, such as
something pleasant or amusing (Wilde, 2001).

• Exposure therapy.

• A common treatment for phobia is called systematic desensitization: Someone with a fear of
something is gradually exposed to that object while remaining relaxed. The same procedure can be
applied to someone with extreme anger. The person is told to relax and then is gradually exposed to
the kinds of events or insults that would usually provoke anger. The person practices remaining calm
in the presence of these insults (Grodnitzky & Tafrate, 2000).

• Problem solving.

• Here the idea is very simple: People who can find a way to solve their problems have less cause to be
angry. For example, children with anger problems benefit from academic tutoring.