No B.S Friday: Don’t be afraid of your anger.
Most Australians seem to live in a very narrow emotional range. I think this is the legacy of British culture, where everything is hidden behind a stiff upper lip and a cup of tea.
Mediterranean culture, for example, is a lot more hot-blooded. You can be yelling at the customer in your coffee shop one moment, the next you’re kissing them goodbye and sending blessings to their mother.
Now I don’t know that this is either good or bad. Culture is just culture. It’s just how people agree to do things.
But I do think that in Australia in particular, we don’t realise how useful some so-called ‘negative’ emotions can be.
Take anger for example.
Research is now saying that anger can make us more productive, and give us more endurance.
Researchers have found that getting angry can also be a powerful motivator.
The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral.
“These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,” said Dr Heather Lench, the first author of the study.
In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams.
The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states – although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.
The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams.
Yep. I’ve seen this. Anger creates determination… up until the point where it tips into frustration and suddenly your golf-clubs are scattered all over the fairway.
In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire.
“This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions,” the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.
I know I certainly perform better when I’m in a state of “physical arousal” amirite? This makes the guys I play soccer with a bit uncomfortable but they know that sometimes you just have to do what it takes to win.
Its’ not all Tony Robbins empowerment and limitless mission though. Sometimes being angry just makes you cheat!
One experiment suggested being angry increased the degree to which participants cheated on tasks compared with the other emotions – except amusement – while another experiment found anger was associated with lower reaction times on a task.
But this is the takeaway:
“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable and maladaptive,” Lench said.
“Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes wellbeing, and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations.”
Boom! This! A thousand times this!
The good Lord and/or biology gave us a range of emotions for a reason. They are all useful.
Out task is to learn how to channel them.
JG.