If you want to achieve your goals, get angry.
New research shows that anger can help people overcome challenges and obstacles that can hinder their ambitions.
A study published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that participants who completed a variety of difficult tasks while in a state of anger performed better than those who felt other emotions such as sadness, desire, and amusement. I found out that it was.
Heather Wrench, lead author of the study and a professor of psychology and brain sciences at Texas A&M University, said the findings suggest that people can use anger as a motivator.
“We found that in difficult and goal-blocking situations, anger leads to better outcomes,” Rench said. However, the study found that anger did not improve people's performance on easier tasks.
The study consisted of six experiments, each testing whether anger helps people accomplish a specific task. Lenzi said the most interesting results came from the first experiment, which measured the number of word puzzles participants could solve in different emotional states.
The experiment involved 233 undergraduate students at Texas A&M. Each student was randomly assigned one emotion for her: anger, desire, sadness, amusement, or neutrality. To elicit emotion, he showed a series of images for five seconds each. For example, those assigned to anger were shown insults about their school's football team.
Participants then had 20 minutes to decode as many words as possible from four sets of seven anagrams displayed on a computer screen. The sets varied in difficulty, and once participants moved on from a puzzle, they could not go back and try it again. A computer program recorded the time participants spent on each puzzle.
The results showed that angry participants solved more puzzles than participants feeling other emotions. Most notably, angry students completed 39% more puzzles than students who felt neutral. Participants who felt angry spent more time solving the puzzles and were more persistent, Lenzi said.
“If you persist even when people are angry, you are more likely to be successful,” she said. “But in all other emotional states, failure is more likely if it persists. Therefore, this seems to suggest that people persist more effectively when they are angry.”
Other experiments have shown whether anger motivates students to sign petitions, helps them get high scores on video games, or makes them cheat on logic or reasoning puzzles to win prizes. I tested it to see if it would work.
Across all difficult situations, participants in the angry condition were more likely to achieve the desired goal.
Is anger always a good thing?
According to psychology experts, not all forms of anger help you achieve your goals.
Extreme anger can be accompanied by physical reactions such as sweaty palms, difficulty breathing, and increased heart rate. A 2022 study in the European Heart Journal found that anger may contribute to the development of certain cardiovascular diseases, particularly heart failure in men and people with diabetes. A 2021 study in the same journal found that intense anger is associated with the onset of stroke.
During arguments between romantic partners, anger can lead to aggressive and derogatory communication, which can damage the relationship, Lench said. But if your goal is to feel heard and supported by your partner, it can also help you clarify your needs.
“Anger is a motivator. But it doesn't mean we stop thinking,” Lenzi said. “So when you feel angry, it's probably an important step to stop and think about why you're angry.”
Raymond Tafrate, a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Central Connecticut State University, said severe anger attacks, if taken too far, can impair a person's ability to perform their job. .
“There's a kind of middle ground. Anger can be helpful, but I think we need to talk about other aspects as well,” said Tafrate, who was not involved in the new study. “Mild or moderate anger is probably life-enhancing for many people.”
The key, Tuffret says, is to embrace anger as a potentially beneficial emotion rather than trying to avoid it.
“Anger can be an important signal that things are not going well and that changes need to be made,” Tuffrate says.
Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University, says that communicating your anger quickly in social situations will make others more likely to listen to you and increase your chances of reaching a resolution. It's even possible, said Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University who was also not involved in the study.
“I call this a displeasure warning, but it just tells the other person that you don't want to be judged by the way you say it. You just want them to know that there's a problem here.” We recognize that there is, and we want to point that out, and we want to suggest an alternative,” Kashdan said. “What happens then is you lower their defenses.”
Even if your words are harsh and offensive, people may still take your concerns into consideration, Kashdan said.
