Does distraction or rumination work better to diffuse anger? Catharsis theory predicts that rumination works best, but empirical evidence is lacking. In this study, angered participants hit a punching bag and thought about the person who had angered them (rumination group) or thought about becoming physically fit (distraction group). After hitting the punching bag, they reported how angry they felt. Next, they were given the chance to administer loud blasts of noise to the person who had angered them. There also was a no punching bag control group. People in the rumination group felt angrier than did people in the distraction or control groups. People in the rumination group were also most aggressive, followed respectively by people in the distraction and control groups. Rumination increased rather than decreased anger and aggression. Doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger. These results directly contradict catharsis theory.
Interesting. A cursory !scholar search indicates these results have replicated, but I haven’t done an in-depth review.
It would be interesting to see a more long-term study about habits around processing anger.
For instance, randomly assigning people different advice about processing anger (likely to have quite an impact on them, I don’t think the average person receives much advice in that class) and then checking in on them a few years later and ask them things like, how many enemies they have, how many enemies they’ve successfully defeated, how many of their interpersonal issues they resolve successfully?
I found this fascinating… it’s rare these days that I see some fundamental assumption in my thinking that I didn’t even realize I was making laid bare like this… it is particularly striking because I think I could easily have realized that my own experience contradicts catharsis theory… I know that I can distract myself to become less angry, but I usually don’t want to, in the moment.
I think that desire is driven by emotion, but rationalized via something like catharsis theory. I want to try and rescue catharsis theory by saying that maybe there are negative long-term effects of being distracted from feelings of anger (e.g. a build up of resentment). I wonder how much this is also a rationalization.
I also wonder how accurately the authors have characterized catharsis theory, and how much to identify it with the “hydraulic model of anger”… I would imagine that there are lots of attempts along the lines of what I suggested to try and rescue catharsis theory by refining or moving away from the hydraulic model. A highly general version might claim: “over a long time horizon, not ‘venting’ anger is net negative”.
Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame? Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction, Anger, and Aggressive Responding
Interesting. A cursory !scholar search indicates these results have replicated, but I haven’t done an in-depth review.
It would be interesting to see a more long-term study about habits around processing anger.
For instance, randomly assigning people different advice about processing anger (likely to have quite an impact on them, I don’t think the average person receives much advice in that class) and then checking in on them a few years later and ask them things like, how many enemies they have, how many enemies they’ve successfully defeated, how many of their interpersonal issues they resolve successfully?
Boggling a bit at the “can you actually reliably find angry people and/or make people angry on purpose?”
I found this fascinating… it’s rare these days that I see some fundamental assumption in my thinking that I didn’t even realize I was making laid bare like this… it is particularly striking because I think I could easily have realized that my own experience contradicts catharsis theory… I know that I can distract myself to become less angry, but I usually don’t want to, in the moment.
I think that desire is driven by emotion, but rationalized via something like catharsis theory. I want to try and rescue catharsis theory by saying that maybe there are negative long-term effects of being distracted from feelings of anger (e.g. a build up of resentment). I wonder how much this is also a rationalization.
I also wonder how accurately the authors have characterized catharsis theory, and how much to identify it with the “hydraulic model of anger”… I would imagine that there are lots of attempts along the lines of what I suggested to try and rescue catharsis theory by refining or moving away from the hydraulic model. A highly general version might claim: “over a long time horizon, not ‘venting’ anger is net negative”.