ANGER is often perceived as a negative emotion that should be suppressed; however this powerful feeling could be useful in driving motivation.
According to an American study, anger can actually help people to achieve ambitious goals. It can act as a source of motivation for overcoming obstacles and accomplishing difficult tasks.
Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, this study was carried out by researchers at Texas A&M University in the United States on over a thousand people who took part in various experiments.
The aim was to assess the role of anger, and other emotions, in certain situations.
In the first experiment, for example, 233 undergraduates were randomly assigned an emotional state: anger, desire, sadness, amusement or neutral.
To elicit these emotions in the participants, the researchers showed them a series of 15 images displayed for five seconds each.
Those assigned anger, for example, were shown images of insults to the university football team. Participants were then asked to work out a series of anagrams.
The results revealed that angry people solved 39 per cent more of the puzzles than students feeling neutral.
Generally speaking, students assigned angry feelings succeeded in completing more anagrams than any of the other participants.
According to the researchers, angry people showed greater perseverance when it came to solving them.
In another experiment, participants had to achieve a high score in a skiing video game, including a difficult and an easy mode. Once again, the anger group of participants fared better than those assigned neutral or sad feelings.
On the other hand, they performed on par with people assigned amusement and desire.
“Across all the experiments, anger improved people’s ability to reach their goals compared with a neutral condition in a variety of challenging situations.
In some cases, it was associated with increased scores or shorter response times. In one experiment, it also increased cheating to achieve a better outcome,” explained the study’s accompanying news release. However, for some experiments, amusement and desire also enabled people to achieve their goal.
“People often believe that a state of happiness is ideal, and the majority of people consider the pursuit of happiness a major life goal,” said lead author Heather Lench, PhD, a professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University.
“The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and wellbeing has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion, but previous research suggests that a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes.” – ETXDailyUp
