Don’t Worry, Be Angry? Effects of Anger on Feelings, Thoughts, and Actions in Conflict and Negotiation

Abstract

This chapter reviews research on the role of anger in conflict and negotiation. I focus on three broad classes of dependent variables that I roughly call feelings, thoughts, and actions to refer to (1) affective states and interpersonal sentiments, (2) conscious thought processes, and (3) actual conflict behavior. In addition, I distinguish between intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of anger, with intrapersonal effects referring to the influence of an individual’s anger on his or her own feelings, thoughts, and actions and interpersonal effects referring to the influence of one individual’s anger on the feelings, thoughts, and actions of one or more other conflict parties. The review reveals that at the intrapersonal level, anger is associated with hostile feelings, biased perceptions and attributions, and competitive behavior. At the interpersonal level, anger sometimes elicits reciprocal hostility that motivates competition and sometimes strategic considerations that motivate cooperation. Recent studies that incorporated several moderators to reconcile these disparate sets of findings are discussed.