How anger works |
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| Institution: | 1. Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis, Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA;2. Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, OH, USA;3. Department of Criminology, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, OH, USA;4. Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada;1. Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;2. Department of Anthropology, University College London, London WC1H 0BW, United Kingdom;3. School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6UR, United Kingdom;4. Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA;1. Boston College, Department of Psychology, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, United States of America;2. Yale University, School of Management, New Haven, CT 06511, United States of America;1. Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA;2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;3. Department of Communication, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;1. Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States of America;2. Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, United States of America;3. Department of Biobehavioral Health, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States of America;4. School of Human Services, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States of America;5. Department of Anthropology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, United States of America;6. Department of Psychology, Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario, Canada;7. Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, United States of America;1. Department of Anthropology and Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States;2. Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States |
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| Abstract: | Anger appears to be a neurocognitive adaptation designed to bargain for better treatment, and is primarily triggered by indications that another individual values the focal individual insufficiently. Once activated, anger orchestrates cognitive, physiological, and behavioral responses geared to incentivize the target individual to place more weight on the welfare of the focal individual. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that anger works by matching in intensity the various outputs it controls to the magnitude of the current input—the precise degree to which the target appears to undervalue the focal individual. By magnitude-matching outputs to inputs, the anger system balances the competing demands of effectiveness and economy and avoids the dual errors of excessive diffidence and excessive belligerence in bargaining. To test this hypothesis, we measured the degree to which audiences devalue each of 39 negative traits in others, and how individuals would react, for each of those 39 traits, if someone slandered them as possessing those traits. We observed the hypothesized magnitude-matchings. The intensities of the anger feeling and of various motivations of anger (telling the offender to stop, insulting the offender, physically attacking the offender, stopping talking to the offender, and denying help to the offender) vary in proportion to: (i) one another, and (ii) the reputational cost that the slanderer imposes on the slandered (proxied by audience devaluation). These patterns of magnitude-matching were observed both within and between the United States and India. These quantitative findings echo laypeople's folk understanding of anger and suggest that there are cross-cultural regularities in the functional logic and content of anger. |
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