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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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We all know anger is bad… right? Generally, it’s unpleasant to feel and it often leads to undesirable outcomes. After all, when was the last time you lost your temper with your boss and was pleased with the outcome?
However, perhaps you can also think of times when anger wasn’t so bad. Perhaps, in some contexts, feeling angry was actually beneficial. This counterintuitive idea was pursued by researchers Matthijs Baas, Carsten De Dreu, and Bernard Nijstad in a series of studies recently published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They found that angry people were more likely to be creative – though this advantage didn’t last for long, as the taxing nature of anger eventually leveled out creativity. This study joins several recent lines of research exploring the relative upside to anger – the ways in which anger is not only less harmful than typically assumed, but may even be helpful (though perhaps in small doses).
In an initial study, the researchers found that feeling angry was indeed associated with brainstorming in a more unstructured manner, consistent with “creative” problem solving. In a second study, the researchers first elicited anger from the study participants (or sadness, or a non-emotional state) and then asked them to engage in a brainstorming session in which they generated ideas to preserve and improve the environment. In the beginning of this task, angry participants generated more ideas (by volume) and generated more original ideas (those thought of by less than 1 percent or less of the other participants), compared to the other sad or non-emotional participants. However, this benefit was only present in the beginning of the task, and eventually, the angry participants generated only as many ideas as the other participants.
These findings reported by Baas and colleagues make sense, given what we already know about anger. Though anger may be unpleasant to feel, it is associated with a variety of attributes that may facilitate creativity. First, anger is an energizing feeling, important for the sustained attention needed to solve problems creatively. Second, anger leads to more flexible, unstructured thought processes. This flexibility involves the use of broad and inclusive categories and the increased ability to find new connections between categories. People who feel angry (vs. sad, for example) are less likely to think in systematic ways, and are more likely to rely on broad, global cues when judging information. This kind of global processing tends to be associated with literally seeing the “bigger picture.”
These findings join the growing body of work showing that negative emotions, like anger, may have beneficial effects in our daily lives. This work, however, is usually accompanied by caveats – anger is not likely to be beneficial in any and all contexts. Rather, anger is likely to be beneficial only in certain situations, or for certain people. Supporting the situation-sensitive nature of the benefits of anger, research I was involved in found that angry people were more likely to perform better in a negotiation, but only when that negotiation was confrontational in nature. Indeed, in these studies, we found that in situations in which anger is likely to be useful – like a confrontational negotiation – participants actually wanted to feel angry and took steps to foster this emotion within themselves.
Supporting the person-sensitive nature of the benefits of anger, another paper recently published in Psychological Science reported that angry people were actually perceived as better leaders, but only when leading people who were less sensitive to conflict. This finding suggests that successful relationships may depend on the alignment between the emotional natures of the partners, even if this alignment involves the experience of anger. Overall, these lines of research demonstrate that anger isn’t all bad news. Rather, feeling angry may be downright beneficial, depending on what one is trying to achieve or whom one is trying to impress.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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13 Comments
Add Commentlol @ "negative emotions." there are none. culture of politeness is bullshit. signed: angry, prolific artist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMmmmh, I would imagine (in my own personal"wisdom" ;-) ) that feeling angry (with minmimal expression) and anger being expressed unhinibited should result in different creative results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs the emotion or the expression=
I haven't read the studies this article is based on, but this appears to be really weird. Maybe anger can flood the brain with chemicals that give the illusion of creative thought. But reflecting back on those few occasions when I got angry in professional situations, I uniformly made incorrect decisions or recommendations; I always had to go back and reconsider. The motivation of the anger was never a rational or constructive solution to the problem at hand; it was always something personal in myself that had no place in cooperative decision making.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, people who are serious about wanting effective group decisions usually shun angry people, and for good reason.
Again, I haven't read the research behind this article, but I wonder if researchers with anger issues cherry picked their results and/or contrived their studies so as to reflect self justification -- just guessing, of course.
Ah, that it explains it....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou've kinda proven the point - creativity is NOT a logical or even constructive process, though a physical construction in the form of a piece of art or musical composition can result. It is not a thought construct. Creativity is intuitive and usually emotional. Anger is an emotion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't get your point. Please explain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot only anger but all our emotions boost to creation.Every man is unique[Only western thinking communities don't believed it] so which emotion boost his creative instinct is depend on his uniqueness.All emotion negative, positive are boosting the creativeness. All emotions are arises from fear of death.Overcome the fear of death man take shelter of sublimation.So anger, insult,envy, jealousy, and other negative as well as love,compassion and other positive emotion boost creativeness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you're interested in this topic, consider reading the book, "The Secret of Mental Majic". The author of this book is William Walker Atkinson. You are strongly advised to read any and all books by this man. Most of his books were written in the early 1900's. His work is STILL ahead of his time!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou smell bad and nobody likes you. (Just trying to help you create a master work.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with Brett Q. Ford.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt had happened with me more then once and all the times, after that much anger, I was able to create better solution.
But all it varies from person to person. Psychic plays a pivotal role in this regard.
If this has been experimented then your result are excellent.
Muhammad Naeem ul Fateh, PhD, UK
“I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; for when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this~ Martin Luther (German Priest and Scholar whose questioning of certain church practices led to the Protestant Reformation. 1483-1546)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with you. It used to happen with me when I was doing Post Graduation. The most latest I have experienced when I got cheated by a friend and I was really frustrated/angry. But I thought in a very positive manner and I created an application which made a city changed. I was able to make understand diplomats and government officials.
I believe on this research but it varies from a person to person. I think, researcher must need to check genetic matchup and ancestory of people (who are giving positive creativity) too.
In this world, many people when they get angry, they always choose wrong path instead of thinking positive and creative.
Muhammad Naeem ul fateh, PhD
I would say what has been said in this article is true. I was in school and witnessed terrible physical abuse events at home. This lead to VOLCANIC anger - a mental state i had never [ and never want to ] experienced before in my life .And in turn it somehow transitioned me into someone with more creative ideas. I have no idea how it happened. May be those events and anger within me made me more of a risk-taker? And that eventually led to out of box thinking? I am not really sure of the inner workings?
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