Personality links to anger: Evidence for trait interaction and differentiation across expression style

Anger is a commonly experienced emotion, although marked individual differences in the expression of anger are observed. Basic dimensions of personality (e.g., Big Five traits) have been shown to predict the experience of trait anger; however, little work has addressed the personality correlates of broader conceptualisations of trait anger (e.g., inward or outward expressions). Additionally, while some recent work has suggested that basic personality traits may show interactive influences on anger expression this work has yet to be independently confirmed. In a large sample of adults we examined, firstly, how Big Five traits associated with several components of anger as measured by the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory. Secondly, we examined whether these associations were further qualified by interactions between Big Five traits. Results indicated neuroticism and, to a lesser extent, (low) agreeableness, were the traits most associated with components of trait anger. Conscientiousness and extraversion were also noted to show links to more focal components of anger. Moderation was observed: conscientiousness moderated neuroticism’s relationship with anger control, and agreeableness and conscientiousness, in a three-way interaction, moderated neuroticism’s relationship with trait anger. These observations help to further clarify the role of Big Five personality traits as a foundation for the experiences of anger, demonstrating how anger style varies across personality configuration.     

廉价的优越感：社会排斥如何影响新奢侈品的消费

本研究从消费者社会需求层面,探讨在中国新奢侈品会给哪些人带来优越感,什么样的产品可以带来优越感,以及为何会带来优越感等问题。本研究使用一个混合设计的实验,结果发现：（1）相比较非社会排斥状态,社会排斥状态增加了消费者的身份消费需求。（2）在产品炫耀性大时,相比较传统大众产品和奢侈品,社会排斥增加了消费者对新奢侈品的购买意愿。而在产品炫耀性小时,社会排斥的影响不显著;（3）社会排斥、产品种类和产品炫耀性三者的交互作用影响消费者购买意愿的中介变量是消费者感知的产品身份价格比。结论表明,相比较传统大众产品和奢侈品,炫耀性新奢侈品以相对低的价格满足了社会排斥消费者的身份消费需求,为他们提供了一个获得优越感的渠道。     

Anger and the virtues: a critical study in virtue individuation

Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that (potentially) dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition to clarifying the relationship between anger and the virtues, my analysis has theoretical implications for virtue individuation more generally, and practical implications for character cultivation.     

Differentially tuned responses to restricted versus prolonged awareness of threat: a preliminary fMRI investigation

Responses to threat occur via two known independent processing routes. We propose that early, reflexive processing is predominantly tuned to the detection of congruent combinations of facial cues that signal threat, whereas later, reflective processing is predominantly tuned to incongruent combinations of threat. To test this prediction, we examined responses to threat-gaze expression pairs (anger versus fear expression by direct versus averted gaze). We report on two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, one employing prolonged presentations (2 s) of threat-gaze pairs to allow for reflective processing (Study 1), and one employing severely restricted (33 ms), backward masked presentations of threat-gaze pairs to isolate reflexive neural responding (Study 2). Our findings offer initial support for the conclusion that early, reflexive responses to threat are predominantly tuned to congruent threat-gaze pairings, whereas later reflective responses are predominantly tuned to ambiguous threat-gaze pairings. These findings highlight a distinct dual function in threat perception.     

Incidental anger and the desire to evaluate

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants’ desire to evaluate others’ ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated.     

Creative production by angry people peaks early on, decreases over time, and is relatively unstructured

Anecdotes and introspective reports from eminent scientists and artists aside, a systematic test of the putative creativity-enhancing effect of anger is missing. This article fills this void with three experiments examining creativity as a function of anger (vs. sad or a mood-neutral control state). Combining insights from the literatures on creativity and on mood and information processing the authors predicted that anger (vs. sadness and a mood-neutral control state) triggers a less systematic and structured approach to the creativity task, and leads to initially higher levels of creativity (as manifested in original ideation and creative insights). Following work on resource depletion, the authors further predicted that anger more than sadness depletes resources and that, therefore, creative performance should decline over time more for angry than for sad people. Results supported predictions. Implications for creativity, information processing, and resource depletion are discussed.     

From anger to solidarity: The emotional echo-chamber of Gezi park protests

By using the Gezi Park protests that took place in Turkey in 2013 as a case, we explore the significance of emotional echo-chamber involved in protests. The analyses are composed of thirty-seven interviews conducted with activists on how they define and understand their preferences and motivations for protesting. We discuss how participants get influenced by beliefs, motives and opinions and bring forth the changes of emotions during such processes and help create an emotional echo-chamber.     

Deployment dynamics of hypnotic anger modulation

To understand the role that attention plays in the deployment timeline of hypnotic anger modulation, we composed an Attentional Blink paradigm where the first and second targets were faces, expressing neutral or angry emotions. We then suppressed the salience of angry faces through a “hypnotic numbing” suggestion. We found that hypnotic suggestion only attenuated the emotional salience of the second target (T2). By implementing drift-diffusion decision modelling, we also found that hypnotic suggestion mainly affected decision thresholds. These findings suggest that hypnotic numbing resulted from belated changes in response strategy. Interestingly, a contrast against non-hypnotized participants revealed that the numbing suggestion had the instruction-like feature of incorporating emotional valence into the attentional task-set. Together, our results portray hypnotic anger modulation as a two-tiered process: first, hypnotic suggestion alters the attentional task-set; second, provided processing and response preparation are not interrupted, a hypnotizability-dependent response based on said altered task-set is produced through late cognitive control strategies.