Daily Anger Research Articles

Development of a brief online intervention to address aggression in the context of emotion-related impulsivity: Evidence from a wait-list controlled trial

Trait-like tendencies to respond impulsively to emotion, labelled emotion-related impulsivity, are robustly related to aggression. We developed and tested an online intervention to address emotion-related impulsivity and aggression. The 6-session intervention focused on behavioral techniques shown to decrease arousal and aggression, supplemented with implementation intentions and smartphone prompts to facilitate skills transfer into daily life. First, we piloted the intervention in-person with 4 people. Then, 235 participants were randomly assigned to take the online intervention immediately or after a wait-list period; those in the waitlist were then invited to take part in the intervention. Participants completed the self-rated Feelings Trigger Action Scale to assess emotion-related impulsivity, the interview-based Modified Overt Aggression Scale and the self-rated Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Participants who took part in the treatment completed daily anger logs. Attrition, as with other online programs, was high; however, treatment completers reported high satisfaction, and outcomes changed more rapidly during treatment than waitlist across all key outcome indices. In analyses including all participants who took part in the treatment (immediate or delayed), we observed moderate-to-large treatment gains, which were maintained as of the 3-month follow-up assessment. This work supports the usefulness of an intervention for addressing emotion-related impulsivity and aggression.

Relations between Reactive and Proactive Aggression and Daily Emotions in Adolescents.

The current study examined whether individual differences in reactive and proactive aggression: 1) relate to level of daily emotion, including happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, 2) predict across-day variability in these emotions, and 3) moderate reactivity of these emotions to positive and negative events. Participants were a racially/ethnically diverse sample of 144 adolescents (80 girls, 64 boys; M age = 13.55years; SD = 1.34). Adolescents self-reported on reactive and proactive aggression in a home visit prior to the collection of daily data. Using daily dairy procedures, adolescents then reported on their daily emotions and positive/negative events over 12 consecutive days. Higher reactive aggression was associated with greater levels of daily anger, more variability in anger across days, and heightened angry reactivity to negative events. Additionally, higher reactive aggression predicted lower levels of daily happiness but greater happy reactivity to positive events. Finally, higher reactive aggression was linked to increased variability in daily fear. In contrast, proactive aggression was largely unrelated to adolescents' daily emotions, with the exception that higher proactive aggression predicted less variability in happiness across days. Results indicate that reactive aggression is characterized by significant emotionality at the daily level, and proactive aggression is characterized by lack of emotionality.

<em>Little Women</em>, Made Small

Little Women, Made Small Laura M. Stevens I've never been a huge fan of Alcott. Looking back, I blame the children's version of Little Women that I read when I was nine. Yes, it was a children's version—gratuitous though that sounds—of a novel famously published for girls. The Little Women that I first read was part of a series of "Illustrated Classic Editions" published in the late 1970s by Moby Books.2 Printed on cheap pulp pages of four by five and a quarter inches—neatly sized for a child's hand—with brightly colored cover illustrations, these paperbacks epitomized accessibility and ease in their form, price, and content. They were about 250 pages long, with a simple, expressive, black-and-white illustration facing every page of text. Modestly priced—my copy of Little Women bears a cover price of $2.50—they could be found in grocery stores. A few were even included in McDonald's Happy Meals, which seems fitting: in their simplifying and sweetening of long, old stories weighed down by that hefty term, "classics," they were the literary equivalent of kid-friendly fast food, steaks and potatoes turned into burgers and fries. I loved the Moby Books as both stories and objects. They litter my memories of early reading, fitting somewhere between Nancy Drew mysteries and the problem novels of Paul Zindel, S. E. Hinton, and Judy Blume. For so many literary scenes—Queequeg's coffin, Tom Sawyer's fence—the image sealed in my mind is the picture I pored over in these books. Having been given charge of the children's section of the used bookstore my mother opened when I was nine, I granted these volumes their own shelf, where I lovingly arranged and rearranged them, sometimes stacking them like the toy blocks I was sure I had outgrown. Here's the rub, though: while I loved the Moby Books, I did not like the Moby version of Little Women. It was boring. It is easy now to see why: the abridgments worked beautifully for novels featuring adventure. One could cut out more discursive sections, like Crusoe's religious agonies or Ishmael's musings on whiteness, and end up with a nice, crisp narrative about surviving on an island or hunting a whale. Little Women's story is about emotions, relationships, maturation, desire. Such a story's impact on the reader inheres in its verbal texture. In the Moby version, gone is the tense complexity of Amy's and Jo's [End Page 95] reciprocal rage. Amy feels left out, she burns Jo's book, Jo shakes her, Amy falls through the ice, and Jo feels bad. Who cares? my younger self asked, before I turned to more exciting fare like The Three Musketeers. Gone is this chapter's sensitive portrayal of female fury, including Marmee's confession of her daily anger. Gone is the dense tangle of feelings that bind siblings together. Gone is Alcott's story. Finding the unabridged Little Women later in life felt like uncovering a scandal. How had this story been taken from me? The answer is that condensing it erased its pleasures. How does women's writing disappear, how is it dismissed? If Alcott provides any example, perhaps problems first arise when a woman's writing is made too small. [End Page 96] Laura M. Stevens University of Tulsa Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press

Little Women , Made Small

Little Women, Made Small Laura M. Stevens I've never been a huge fan of Alcott. Looking back, I blame the children's version of Little Women that I read when I was nine. Yes, it was a children's version—gratuitous though that sounds—of a novel famously published for girls. The Little Women that I first read was part of a series of "Illustrated Classic Editions" published in the late 1970s by Moby Books.2 Printed on cheap pulp pages of four by five and a quarter inches—neatly sized for a child's hand—with brightly colored cover illustrations, these paperbacks epitomized accessibility and ease in their form, price, and content. They were about 250 pages long, with a simple, expressive, black-and-white illustration facing every page of text. Modestly priced—my copy of Little Women bears a cover price of $2.50—they could be found in grocery stores. A few were even included in McDonald's Happy Meals, which seems fitting: in their simplifying and sweetening of long, old stories weighed down by that hefty term, "classics," they were the literary equivalent of kid-friendly fast food, steaks and potatoes turned into burgers and fries. I loved the Moby Books as both stories and objects. They litter my memories of early reading, fitting somewhere between Nancy Drew mysteries and the problem novels of Paul Zindel, S. E. Hinton, and Judy Blume. For so many literary scenes—Queequeg's coffin, Tom Sawyer's fence—the image sealed in my mind is the picture I pored over in these books. Having been given charge of the children's section of the used bookstore my mother opened when I was nine, I granted these volumes their own shelf, where I lovingly arranged and rearranged them, sometimes stacking them like the toy blocks I was sure I had outgrown. Here's the rub, though: while I loved the Moby Books, I did not like the Moby version of Little Women. It was boring. It is easy now to see why: the abridgments worked beautifully for novels featuring adventure. One could cut out more discursive sections, like Crusoe's religious agonies or Ishmael's musings on whiteness, and end up with a nice, crisp narrative about surviving on an island or hunting a whale. Little Women's story is about emotions, relationships, maturation, desire. Such a story's impact on the reader inheres in its verbal texture. In the Moby version, gone is the tense complexity of Amy's and Jo's [End Page 95] reciprocal rage. Amy feels left out, she burns Jo's book, Jo shakes her, Amy falls through the ice, and Jo feels bad. Who cares? my younger self asked, before I turned to more exciting fare like The Three Musketeers. Gone is this chapter's sensitive portrayal of female fury, including Marmee's confession of her daily anger. Gone is the dense tangle of feelings that bind siblings together. Gone is Alcott's story. Finding the unabridged Little Women later in life felt like uncovering a scandal. How had this story been taken from me? The answer is that condensing it erased its pleasures. How does women's writing disappear, how is it dismissed? If Alcott provides any example, perhaps problems first arise when a woman's writing is made too small. [End Page 96] Laura M. Stevens University of Tulsa Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press

Daily Deviations in Anger, Guilt, and Sympathy: A Developmental Diary Study of Aggression.

With a diary study of 4- and 8-year-olds, we tested the association between daily deviations in anger and aggressive behavior, and whether this link was moderated by feelings of guilt and sympathy. Caregivers reported their children's anger and aggression for 10 consecutive days (470 records; N=80, 53% girls). To calculate daily anger deviations from average anger levels, we subtracted each child's average anger score (i.e., across 10days) from his/her daily anger scores. Children reported their guilty feelings in response to vignettes depicting intentional harm, as well as their dispositional sympathy levels. Multilevel modeling indicated that within-child spikes in daily anger were associated with more aggression, above and beyond between-child differences in average anger levels. However, this association was weaker for children who reported higher levels of guilt. Sympathy did not moderate the anger-aggression link. We discuss potential implications for affective-developmental models of aggression and interventions that target anger-related aggression.

Daily heterosexism experiences and well-being among LGB young adults: The moderating role of attachment style.

This study examined within-person links between daily heterosexism experiences and well-being among lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults, and tested the hypothesis that attachment insecurity amplifies the negative impact of heterosexism on well-being. A sample of 82 lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults completed a measure of attachment style at the start of the study, and then reported on heterosexism experiences and facets of well-being in Internet surveys at the end of each day for 7-10 consecutive days (total of 706 days in the sample). Multilevel regression was used to test the interaction between attachment variables (anxiety and avoidance) and the presence of everyday heterosexism experiences in predicting 3 facets of daily well-being (self-assurance, anger, and fear). Results indicated that attachment variables moderated the within-person link between daily heterosexism experiences and well-being for anger and fear but not for self-assurance. As hypothesized, daily heterosexism was positively related to daily anger and fear for people with higher levels of avoidance but not those with lower levels of avoidance (controlling for previous day levels of well-being). Contrary to hypothesis, however, daily heterosexism was positively associated with anger and fear for participants with low levels of attachment anxiety but not for those with higher levels of attachment anxiety. Analyses also revealed no links between the attachment variables and frequency of heterosexism experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record

Protecting Autonomy, Protecting Relatedness: Appraisal Patterns of Daily Anger and Shame in theUnitedStates andJapan

AbstractThe present study tested the idea thatU.S. and Japanese participants appraise anger and shame situations in line with the American concern for autonomy and the Japanese concern for relatedness, respectively. Sixty‐fiveU.S. and 72Japanese students participated in a 7‐day diary study of anger and shame. Each day, participants reported their most important anger and shame incident and indicated whether they themselves or others were to be blamed (anger appraisals), and whether they focused on themselves or the opinion of others (shame appraisals). They also indicated whether they had experienced anger toward someone close or distant and whether their shame was publicly seen or privately felt. In line with theJapanese concern for protecting relatedness, Japanese compared toU.S. participants blamed themselves relatively more than others during anger situations with close others and focused on others rather than themselves during shame episodes that were publicly seen. Underlining theU.S. concern for protecting autonomy, Americans blamed others more than themselves during anger situations and focused more on themselves than others during shame situations.

What Triggers Anger in Everyday Life? Links to the Intensity, Control, and Regulation of These Emotions, and Personality Traits.

Why do people experience anger? Most of our knowledge on anger-triggering events is based on the study of reactions at a single time point in a person's life. Little research has examined how people experience anger in their daily life over time. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive examination of the situational determinants of anger over the course of 3 weeks. Using daily diary methodology, people (N = 173; 2,342 anger episodes) reported their most intense daily anger and, with an open-ended format, described the trigger. Participants also answered questions on anger intensity, control, and regulatory strategies, along with baseline personality trait measures. Using an iterative coding system, five anger trigger categories emerged: other people, psychological and physical distress, intrapersonal demands, environment, and diffuse/undifferentiated/unknown. Compared with other triggers, when anger was provoked by other people or when the source was unknown, there was a stronger positive association with anger intensity and lack of control. Personality traits (i.e., anger, mindfulness, psychological need satisfaction, the Big Five) showed few links to the experience and regulation of daily anger. Although aversive events often spur anger, the correlates and consequences of anger differ depending on the source of aversion; personality traits offer minimal value in predicting anger in daily life.

Aggression as Affect Regulation: Extending Catharsis Theory to Evaluate Aggression and Experiential Anger in the Laboratory and Daily Life

Two studies examined the predictions of the catharsis theory of aggression, which suggests that aggressing towards the source of frustration should reduce aggressive drive (e.g., anger), and lead to the increased likelihood of future aggression (Hokanson, 1974; Verona & Sullivan, 2008). Across the two studies, predictions from this theory were generally supported. Using a laboratory paradigm, Study 1 found that provoked participants allowed to evaluate the source of frustration reported a nonzero decrease in anger, while individuals who evaluated an unrelated source showed no significant change. Using daily diary methods, Study 2 results demonstrated that individuals who had a decrease in anger following aggression in Study 1 were more likely to aggress on high anger days. In contrast, among individuals who had an increase in anger after aggressing, there was no relationship between daily anger and aggression. Implications for the adaptive aspects of aggression are discussed.

Concurrent and Prospective Relations Between Distress Tolerance, Life Stressors, and Anger

The current investigation examined relations between distress tolerance (DT), life stressors, and anger using cross-sectional and prospective designs. In Study 1, low DT was uniquely associated with higher levels of trait anger and anger control difficulties. In Study 2, the DT and anger relationship was examined through two assessments, 1 month apart, and using twice-weekly daily diary assessments. Low DT predicted increases in anger 1 month later only among individuals reporting low past-month romantic negative life events; it did not interact with daily stressors in predicting daily anger. Lower daily DT was uniquely associated with greater daily anger. Overall, support was found for unique concurrent relations between low DT and problematic anger, though no support was found for low DT acting as a prospective vulnerability factor for increased angry response to stressors. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Associations between daily chronic pain intensity, daily anger expression, and trait anger expressiveness: An ecological momentary assessment study

Links between elevated trait anger expressiveness (anger-out) and greater chronic pain intensity are well documented, but pain-related effects of expressive behaviors actually used to regulate anger when it is experienced have been little explored. This study used ecological momentary assessment methods to explore prospective associations between daily behavioral anger expression and daily chronic pain intensity. Forty-eight chronic low back pain (LBP) patients and 36 healthy controls completed electronic diary ratings of momentary pain and behavioral anger expression in response to random prompts 4 times daily for 7days. Across groups, greater trait anger-out was associated with greater daily behavioral anger expression (P<0.001). LBP participants showed higher levels of daily anger expression than controls (P<0.001). Generalized estimating equation analyses in the LBP group revealed a lagged main effect of greater behavioral anger expression on increased chronic pain intensity in the subsequent assessment period (P<0.05). Examination of a trait×situation model for anger-out revealed prospective associations between elevated chronic pain intensity and later increases in behavioral anger expression that were restricted largely to individuals low in trait anger-out (P<0.001). Trait×situation interactions for trait anger suppression (anger-in) indicated similar influences of pain intensity on subsequent behavioral anger expression occurring among low anger-in persons (P<0.001). Overlap with trait and state negative affect did not account for study findings. This study for the first time documents lagged within-day influences of behavioral anger expression on subsequent chronic pain intensity. Trait anger regulation style may moderate associations between behavioral anger expression and chronic pain intensity.

Motor control accuracy: A consequential probe of individual differences in emotion regulation.

Two studies (total N = 147) sought to model emotion-regulation processes in cognitive-motoric terms. Hostile or nonhostile thoughts were primed and, immediately following, individuals held a joystick as accurately as possible on a presented visual target. Study 1 revealed that the activation of hostile thoughts impaired motor control at low levels of agreeableness but facilitated motor control at high levels of agreeableness, consistent with emotion-regulation views of this trait. Study 2 did not assess the trait of agreeableness but rather sought to determine whether better motor control following activated hostile thoughts would predict lesser reactivity to stressors in an experience-sampling protocol. It did, and relevant results are reported for daily anger, negative affect, and positive affect. In addition, and consistent with the agreeableness findings of Study 1, better motor control that follows hostile thoughts predicted greater empathy on high-stress days. Motor control probes of the present type thus appear consequential in understanding emotion-regulation processes and successes in emotion regulation.

Evaluation of a Treatment Program for Sexually Abused Adult Males

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an individual treatment program for five adult males who experienced childhood sexual abuse. A treatment manual focusing on abuse-related self-blame, anger, and anxiety was developed. Daily self-blame, anger, and anxiety self-ratings were completed before and throughout treatment. A multiple-baseline approach was used to evaluate treatment effects. Overall findings indicated that most participants experienced significant reductions in self-blame, anger, and anxiety as a result of their involvement in the sexual abuse treatment program. Treatment was particularly helpful in decreasing feelings of self-blame and anger. The study made an important initial contribution to the development of systematic treatment outcome research for a population of individuals that has received relatively little attention. The results have implications for future clinical and research efforts with sexually abused adult males.

Anger, shame and guilt in children with externalizing problems: An imbalance of affects?

In two studies, we examined the extent to which children with behaviour problems are characterized by a predominance of anger and a relative absence of the moral emotions of guilt and shame. In the first study, a community sample (N = 48) was used, in the second study a clinical sample (N = 20) was compared to a control group of non-problematic children (N = 20). The results of these studies partially supported the anger-dominance hypothesis. The non-clinical group reported higher frequencies of daily anger and also more anger in response to ambiguous hypothetical situations (Study 1). The clinical group also demonstrated an anger bias. However, they only did so by a more implicit procedure: they added anger elements to their free descriptions of events eliciting negative emotions like fear, sadness, jealousy and shame (Study 2). In both studies, there was a tendency for children with behaviour problems to react with less intense guilt and shame to ambiguous situations.

Witnessing interparental psychological aggression in childhood: implications for daily conflict in adult intimate relationships.

We examined the consequences of witnessing interparental psychological aggression in childhood for daily conflict processes in adult intimate relationships. Both partners in 73 heterosexual couples provided daily diary reports of relationship conflict over a 28-day period. Partners' reports of witnessing mother-to-father and father-to-mother psychological aggression were used to predict exposure to daily relationship conflicts and reactivity to those conflicts (as reflected in end-of-day anger). Results showed no evidence of exposure effects: Witnessing interparental psychological aggression was unrelated to the number of conflict days reported by either partner. Reactivity effects emerged for males only, with father's aggression predicting increased reactivity and mother's aggression predicting the opposite. However, we found evidence of direct or unmediated effects of interparental conflict on daily anger for both males and females. Mirroring the reactivity pattern, the same-sex parent's psychological aggression predicted greater daily anger, whereas the opposite-sex parent's aggression predicted less daily anger. These effects emerged independently of Big Five measures of personality; moreover, Big Five measures did not predict outcomes independently of interparental aggression.

Correlates of Anger Symptoms in Women in Middle Adulthood

Anger is of great interest to health professionals due to its relationship with disease outcomes. However, male samples have been used in most studies examining linkages between anger and health indicators. In this exploratory study, anger symptoms and their cognitive and environmental correlates were examined in a sample of 87 women in middle adulthood. This descriptive-correlational study involved secondary analyses of data obtained in the third phase of a longitudinal study of health in middle adulthood. Data were collected with a battery of well-established self-report instruments. Descriptive statistics, t tests, and correlational and regression analysis were used. Significant correlates of anger symptoms included lower optimism, external health locus of control, higher frequency and severity of daily hassles, lower functional social support, and loss of important relationship(s) during the past year. Greater body mass index, inadequate sleep, lack of exercise, drinking, and use of over-the-counter drugs were also associated with anger symptomatology. Findings regarding the relationship of daily stress and anger were consistent with the Framingham Study. Contrary to expectations, women who reported more anger symptoms were not suppressors of their anger but directed it outward.

High general anger: Correlates and treatment

Two studies on high general anger are reported. In Study 1 high anger Ss reported significantly more general anger, situational anger, anger-related physiological arousal, frequency and intensity of daily anger and general anxiety than low anger Ss. In response to provocation, heart rates (HRs) did not differ, but high anger Ss reported more state anger and tendencies to be verbally and physically antagonistic and lowered tendency to cope constructively. A regression on general anger revealed that general anxiety, coping through verbal antagonism, and average daily level of anger entered the regression and accounted for 70% of the variance. In Study 2, high anger was treated with a relaxation coping skills intervention. Compared to controls, treated Ss reported less general and situational anger, and less state anger, verbal and physical antagonism and greater constructive coping when provoked. These gains were maintained at 5-week and 1-year follow-ups. Groups did not differ on HR when provoked, daily anger ratings or trait anxiety. One-year follow-up, however, revealed significantly lower general anxiety for treated Ss. Results were discussed in terms of the characteristics of high anger Ss, the role of general anxiety in general anger and the usefulness of self-control relaxation approaches for anger reduction.