Understanding Anger

Anger is always included in lists of discrete emotions and it is usually categorized as negative. The likely reason for this is that it is an integral part of aggression, hostility and violence, which are so negative for society. However, the experience of anger is not always negative. Izard (1991) places it alongside disgust and contempt, describing the three emotions as often interacting in human experience. From an evolutionary perspective, Izard sees anger as having the rather obvious function of energizing the person for defence. Such defence and feelings of physical empowerment, which often attend it, might lead to aggression, either physical or verbal, but not necessarily. In passing, it is also worth mentioning that there are causes of aggression other than anger, some of them emotional. Interestingly, Izard also points out that both the experience and the expression of anger can be positive. He mentions, for example, the possibility that the controlled expression of anger that is seen as justified might strengthen the relationship between the two people involved. A number of psychologists have written about anger, but none so cogently as Averill (1982) with his usual social constructionist view. In his treatise on anger, Averill not only shows that it is possible to undertake a penetrating analysis of a single emotion but also that in so doing it is possible to gain a much improved understanding of emotion in general.

Averill characterizes anger as a conflictive emotion that is biologically related to aggressive systems and to social living, symbolization and self-awareness. Psychologically, it is aimed at the correction of a perceived wrong and, socio culturally, at upholding accepted standards of conduct.

Averill regards emotions as social syndromes or transitory rules, as well as shortterm dispositions to respond in particular ways and to interpret such responses as emotional. He distinguishes between conflictive emotions (of which anger is one), impulsive emotions (inclinations and aversion s) and transcendental emotions, which involve a breakdown in the boundaries of the ego.

The theory suggests that, although some emotions have all three of these characteristics, complex behaviour usually involves conflicts. These result in emotions that are compromises, which help to resolve the conflict. Biologically, aggression is linked to anger, but is not equated with it. Furthermore, Averill has it that there is a biological tendency in humans to follow rules as well as to formulate them. There is also a biologically based tend ency to become upset if the rules are broken. Against this theoretical background, anger (and other emotions), although biologically based, become highly symbolic and reliant on appraisals in humans. Psychologically, anger then is seen as concerned with the correction of a perceived wrong. So, like other emotions, it will have its object, which is partly its instigation, and its target and an aim. Socio culturally, Averill suggests that anger is about upholding accepted standards of conduct, perhaps unwittingly. Any emotion is concerned with such standards (rules that guide behaviour). Other rules relevant to emotion concern its expression, its course and outcome and the way in which it is causally attributed. As Averill suggests, a self-evident rule of anger is, for example, that it should be spontaneous rather than deliberate.

From this analysis of anger (to which the present brief discussion does not do justice - the original rewards close study) Averill argues that any theory of emotion should not be restrictive and should relate to all pertinent phenomena, if they are seen as part of emotion in everyday language. The important implication here is that everyday emotion, or folk concepts of emotion, can be scientifically useful. The aim would be to uncover what Averill terms the prototypic attributes of various emotions and to determine the rules that guide them. As mentioned elsewhere, Averill's view of emotion is that although biologically based it is largely socially constructed in humans. In their analysis of anger and hostility from a developmental viewpoint, Lemerise and Dodge (1993) emphasize the functional significance of anger. More broadly than Izard, they see anger as serving a number of functions, including the organization and regulation of physiological and psychological processes related to self-defence and mastery, plus the regulation of social and inter personal behaviours. They regard anger as functioning as an energizer, an organizer and as a social signal. Lemerise and Dodge are particularly concerned with how anger develops and is caused. They make the point that the cognitive ability of young children is important in their developing anger, although the basic, original causes of anger seem to be to do with physical restraints and interference with activity. The development of anger becomes closely entwined with the processes of socialization, one general rule of which appears to be the encouragement of positive emotion and the control of negative emotion (which includes anger).

Of importance in this context is the manner in which parents respond to angry expressions in their children. There are large-scale individual differences here, which are dependent on the child, the parents and the circumstances. However, for present purposes these details do not matter. Of importance is that, although anger appears very early in life, as Averill suggests and Lemerise and Dodge endorse, its development is best understood in interpersonal terms.