A new series of studies shows: in situations where persistence and concentration are required, it is anger that can enhance a person's ability to achieve results.
According to the results of a recent study, if you want to achieve your goal, you need to get angry. If you want to tackle a difficult task, this feeling will help you.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, describes experiments that tested how anger can help people achieve their goals. Researchers found that in cases where tasks were challenging and required considerable effort, this emotion helped participants achieve results better than happiness, sadness, or a neutral state.
"Participants who felt anger performed better in various situations despite difficulties compared to neutral conditions and some other emotional states. This included solving puzzles, cheating to win prizes, skiing video games, and political actions — voting or signing a petition," said Heather Lench, the lead author of the study, a professor of psychology and brain sciences at Texas A&M University.
"However, anger did not lead to better results in relatively simple situations unrelated to such tasks," Lench added.
Why Anger Can Improve Outcomes
In one of the experiments, 233 college students were randomly assigned to emotional states. Students who were to experience anger were presented with insults directed at their football team. Participants in a desire state saw desserts, those meant to feel amusement — cute kittens and laughing babies, while the 'sadness' group was shown images of funerals and illnesses.
After the emotional setup, students were given 20 minutes to create and solve as many words as possible from four sets of seven anagrams of varying difficulty. Those who were deliberately angered performed 39% better than participants in a neutral state.
Why Anger Helps Specifically in Difficult Tasks
"We cannot say exactly what happens, but we suspect that the reactions that occur with anger — focus, increased physiological arousal, the drive to approach the problem — provide an advantage in difficult situations," Lench explains. "In simple tasks, these changes do not have a significant impact."
Soraya Chemaly, an activist and author of the book "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger", notes that the study's findings confirm what she has observed herself. According to her, while anger can be destructive, it can also clarify thoughts.
"Anger is interesting in that it is a cognitively clarifying emotion," Chemaly says. "When people are angry, they often think methodically, strategically, quite clearly, because anger distills complex emotions and ideas."
And while sadness causes a person to withdraw, anger prompts them to act, seek support, and demand change.
"We tend to think of anger as destructive and threatening to relationships. But in reality, it is very social," Chemaly notes. "When a person is angry, they often have to involve others to change the circumstances that caused the anger. In most cases, someone needs to acknowledge the injustice or help influence the situation — and sadness does not do that."
Other studies have also shown that anger can accelerate creative problem-solving.
"All emotions have value… If you can recognize them, name them, and make sense of them, each can help in achieving goals," Chemaly emphasizes. "If you are angry — and for many, this is an unpleasant emotion — do not isolate it. Do not suppress it. There is a lot of information and knowledge in anger."
