Anger Management

Many occupational therapy techniques and theories addressing anger have been incluenced by general misconceptions about anger within the field of psychology and the general public. Until occupational therapists develop a unique perspective for defining anger and understanding how anger affects one's ability to function in one's occupational roles, they will continue to depend upon other professions to provide information on addressing anger problems. Part one of this two-part series on anger management formulates a construct of normal anger pertinent to occupational therapy practice and identifies complexities and misconceptions which have obscured the nature of anger. The second article presents basic concepts of anger management and mismanagement, provides clinical applications of these concepts, and delineates how anger affects human occupation. To accomplish this purpose, the Model of Human Occupation was used as a framework for integrating information on anger from the social sciences into a perspective of anger useful for the occupational therapist.     

Anger and Absurdity

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - I argue that there is an interesting and underexplored sense in which some negative reactive attitudes such as anger are often absurd. I explore implications of...     

Anger Can Help: Clinical Representation of Three Pathways of Anger

Anger is a powerful emotion prevalent in therapy. An integrative model situating varied manifestations of anger within a purposive context of healing and repair following relationship trauma is needed. A first paper (Butler, Meloy-Miller, Seedall, & Dicus, 2017) approached anger as a psychological and relational construction of diffuse physiological arousal and provided a conceptual model of how the experience of offense interacts with a person's view of self in relation to other (VSIRO) in the formation of anger. Three resulting trajectories and pathways of anger were outlined. Here we provide clinical representations of these pathways—two pathways of hostile anger arising from pathogenic VSIROs (inflated, with accompanying externalizing anger, and collapsed, with accompanying internalizing anger), and a third pathway of benevolent anger, arising from a balanced VSIRO. Clinical application of the model through several vignettes illuminates its use in discriminating helpful from harmful pathways of anger and developing interventions for reshaping pathogenic anger to beneficent anger.     

Students' Adjustments in Anger

Abstract

Hypotheses based on minority influence theory (Moscovici, 1976) about the effects on the acceptance of influence of numerical strength and alleged endorsement of the minority's cause by a leader were examined. French-Canadian undergraduates read an account of a march held by a feminist group to sensitize the public to violence against women. Predictions inspired from laboratory findings were that subjects would react favorably without alleged endorsement to the movement's appeal as a function of size increment (45 vs. 200 vs. 2,000 marchers), whereas they would react more favorably when endorsement was alleged, regardless of numbers. Main effects of numerical strength were found for the rating of usefulness of the march and willingness to join a future march. A critical mass effect, attained with 200 marchers, was not increased with 2,000. With alleged leader's endorsement, the march with the largest crowd was judged the most useful, but similar willingness to attend a future march was expressed whatever the crowd size. As hypothesized, greater commitment was attributed to the marchers when leader's support was intimated. The findings suggest that members of the majority could identify with a minority whose cause was supported by a prestigious leader, even if it was small, whereas they needed the assurance of numbers to follow a leaderless minority.     

Anger: Scary Good

I argue that recent attempts to vindicate blame have failed to fully face the vengeful feelings and angry outbursts that have led to scepticism about blame’s ethical status. This paper endeavours to fill that gap. I claim that feelings of angry blame are characteristically responsive to threats to social status, and that angry expressions are distinctive because of their scariness. Still, I conclude, there is an important place for angry blame in good lives and good relationships. In offering a defence of angry feelings and expressions, I argue that blame’s seemingly objectionable features are crucial to its expressive and restorative power.     

In Praise of Anger

Anger, as archetypal, is met with ambivalence. Buddhism considers it toxic, and Christianity holds it as a sin and as righteousness itself. Ancient Hebrew and Hindu cultures locate it in the seat of divinity. This article aims to explore and psychologically redeem anger in its everyday manifestations and in its background in the Western tradition. The Christian Bible, Ancient Greek literature, Dante, Blake, and Shakespeare are all visited. An image emerges of a force that paradoxically graces us with its benefactions as well as destroys us.     

The Multidimensional Anger Inventory

Previous research suggests that anger has important social and health consequences, particularly cardiovascular health. The pathogenic aspects of anger have not been identified, however, in part because of a reliance on unidimensional measures of anger. The present article describes psychometric data for an inventory that is sensitive to the multidimensional nature of the anger construct. It was hypothesized that the newly developed Multidimensional Anger Inventory (MAI) would include scales reflective of the following dimensions of anger: frequency, duration, magnitude, mode of expression, hostile outlook, and range of anger-eliciting situations. The mode of expression dimension was expected to contain separate anger-in, anger-out, guilt, brood, and anger-discuss measures. The inventory was administered to two populations: male and female college students and male factory workers. Factor analyses of the MAI within the two samples showed that the frequency, duration, and magnitude dimensions clustered together to form an anger-arousal factor that accounted for 64% and 71% of the variance in the two samples, respectively. The range of anger-eliciting situations and hostile outlook emerged as separate dimensions, as hypothesized. Mode of anger expression was best described by two dimensions labeled anger-in and anger-out. Psychometric analyses of the scale showed that it possessed adequate test-retest reliability (r = 0.75) and high internal consistency (alpha = .84 and .89 for the two samples). The validity of the scale was supported by the expected pattern of relations with other inventories designed to assess anger or hostility. Comparisons of MAI scores between (college versus factory) and within (male versus female) populations were made.     

Varieties of Anger: The Relation Between Emotion Terms and Components of Anger Expressions

Component theory (C. Smith & H. Scott, 1997) predicts that presence of component movements (action units) alters the decoded meaning of a basic emotional expression. We tested whether the meaning of the basic expression of anger varied when different components were present in the expression. Participants were asked to label variants of anger from Ekman and Friesen's Pictures of Facial Affect using 15 anger terms, and invariance of labeling was tested by manipulating the judgment task. Data were analyzed using consensus analysis, multidimensional scaling, and numerical scaling. Components did not result in consensus about fine distinctions in the meanings of the anger expressions. Varying the type of task strongly affected results. We believe this occurred because language elicits different categorization processes than evaluation of facial expressions nonverbally.     

Anger reactions of Iranian adolescents

The purposes of this study were to examine the anger reactions of Iranian adolescents directed against their peer groups, parents, and teachers, or school faculties, and also to compare the results with Gesell's data from 1956. A questionnaire was developed according to Gesell's study to investigate the kinds of anger reactions 454 high school students (258 girls and 196 boys) expressed against their peer groups, parents and teachers, or school faculties. Adolescents used more crying against their fathers than mothers, peers, and teachers and more verbal aggression against their peers than their parents and teachers. For kind of anger reaction against parents and teachers or school faculties chi squared was significant across sex of adolescents. Finally, the kinds of anger reactions against mothers and stronger peers were significantly related to mothers' education.     

Anger of women incest survivors

Adult women survivors of incest (n = 68) were compared to other women (n = 93) with respect to several questionnaire measures of manifest anger. The vast majority of the research participants were white, middle class, heterosexual, and Michigan residents. Incest survivors were angrier than other women, both in general and at their parents. Anger toward mother and anger toward father were comparable. Few incest survivors blamed either parent for the incest, except in those speciflc cases where the parent was a perpetrator. Not surprisingly, incest survivors were particularly angry at parent perpetrators when they were held responsible for the abuse. Incest occurred in families where other traumas were present, and the extent of these other traumas was also associated with increased anger at parents. Women who identified with feminism and who had participated in therapy were angrier at their parents than were other women. Therapy implications of these results were discussed.This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. The help and encouragement of committee members Margaret Buttenheim, Kathleen Faller, and Sheryl Olson are gratefully acknowledged. Howard Gottlieb, Judith Ballou, Donna Silbert, and Robert Daniels also contributed substantially to this research.Financial support was provided by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Horace D. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.     

Deterring Anger and Anger-Motivated Behaviors

Two experiments were carried out to explore an anger-reducing strategy based on Brehm's emotional intensity theory. According to this theory, anger can be reduced indirectly by interfering with the feeling of anger rather than by dealing directly with the source of anger. One strategy involves providing the angered person with a reason for feeling happy. We predicted that anger intensity would be reduced not only by a large reason for feeling happy, such as a large gift, but also by a small reason, like a tiny gift. A medium-size gift was expected to maintain anger at approximately its instigated level. Both experiments instigated anger by personal insult and then measured the intensity of felt anger and retaliation after either no further treatment, or a small, a moderate, or large irrelevant gift was presented. The results for felt anger and retaliation confirmed our theoretical expectations.     

Anger communication in deaf children

In this study, we investigated how deaf children express their anger towards peers and with what intentions. Eleven-year-old deaf children (n=21) and a hearing control group (n=36) were offered four vignettes describing anger-evoking conflict situations with peers. Children were asked how they would respond, how the responsible peer would react, and what would happen to their relationship. Deaf children employed the communicative function of anger expression differently from hearing children. Whereas hearing children used anger expression to reflect on the anguish that another child caused them, deaf children used it rather bluntly and explained less. Moreover, deaf children expected less empathic responses from the peer causing them harm. Both groups did, however, expect equally often that the relationship with the peer would stay intact. These findings are discussed in the light of deaf children's impaired emotion socialization secondary to their limited communication skills.     

Women and Anger in Psychotherapy

No abstract available for this article.