Anger is something with which we are all familiar from our extensive personal experience with it. And yet, anger seems to be a bit more complex and multifaceted than most of us realize. Emotionally, we experience anger as a range of feelings from minor frustration or annoyance to intense rage or fury. This emotional experience is what most readily comes to mind when we reflect on a recent anger episode. Anger also involves characteristic physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components.

At the physiological level, anger involves arousal of the autonomic nervous system. This is typically experienced as a rush of adrenaline, muscle tension, increased heart rate, and other sensations which are part of how our bodies prepare us for action. Some people experience this sort of physiological arousal more intensely than others, and some experience it over a longer period of time than others. This combination of intense and long-lasting arousal can be a risk factor for a number of health problems.

Cognitively, anger often involves the perception of some sort of threat to ourselves, our property, our self-image, or other areas with which we identify. During an angry episode, we are likely to perceive even neutral events as being intentional, unfair, and undeserved. Not surprisingly, this usually has the effect of making us angrier. It turns out that how we think about events in our environment is very important to why we become angry initially and how our anger is maintained over time.

The behavioral component of anger includes the manner in which it is communicated. Some people tend to suppress their anger, holding it inside until they feel like they are going to boil over. This is sometimes described as an “anger-in” style of anger expression. Others express their anger outwardly in uncontrolled displays of yelling, slamming doors, threatening others, or even aggressive behavior (i.e., an “anger-out” approach to anger expression). Both of these anger expression styles can lead to problems, and both can be contrasted with healthy anger control.

At the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, we are interested in trait anger (i.e., one’s general propensity to experience angry feelings), anger expression and control, and a number of closely-related topics (e.g., anger rumination, hostility, emotion regulation, aggression). At mild to moderate levels, anger can have a number of beneficial effects; however, anger that is excessive, chronic, or associated with maladaptive behaviors can lead to a number of problems and deserves attention.

Tags: anger expression, emotion regulation, trait anger