Venting Your Anger? Don’t - You Are Only Making It Worse

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30 January 2009

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Article written by crannie @asianfanatics.net

Have you ever felt really angry at something or someone? How would you handle it? In the movie Analyze This, a psychiatrist (played by Billy Crystal) advises his client, a New York gangster (played by Robert De Niro), “You know what I do when I’m angry? I hit a pillow. Try that.” The client produces a gun and immediately fires several bullets into the pillow. “Feel better?” asks the psychiatrist. “Yeah, I do,” the client replies.

Such an example shows the popularity of the concept of “venting,” better known in the psychological literature as catharsis. The Freudian theory of catharsis theorises that venting a person’s anger is a way of reducing the pressure that is building up within a system. The main concept is that it is better to let the anger out in small doses here and there, rather than to keep the anger contained within, allowing it to build up until eventually a dangerous explosion results.

But if venting actually works, and people actually can “get the anger out of their system” by venting, then this should cause people to be less aggressive, because they are less angry. However, when scientific experiments are devised to test this theory, it usually shows that venting actually elevates a person’s anger rather than relieve it.

In an early experiment by Hornberger (1959), participants were first subjected to a personal insult by a confederate (a person who works with the experimenter, unknown to the participants). Afterwards, half the participants were allowed to vent their anger by pounding on nails with a hammer, while the other half (the control group) were not allowed to vent their anger. The participants were then given the opportunity to criticise the confederate who insulted them. Results showed that the group who pounded the nails and vented their anger, were actually more hostile to the confederate than the group who were not allowed to vent their anger.

Copee Bear teaching children the wrong message

In a more recent experiment by Bushman (2002), participants were induced into feeling anger, and were split into one of three groups: one group allowed participants to vent their anger by punching a punching bag as many times as they liked while thinking about the person who had angered them; another group was allowed to punch the punching bag, but instead participants were told to think about doing so for the purposes of becoming fit; and the third group was a control group in which participants were not allowed to punch the punching bag. Following this, measurements of participants’ anger and aggression levels were conducted.

The results showed that participants who took their anger out on the punching bag while thinking about the person who angered them, were the most aggressive and angry. Venting their anger did not lead to a positive mood. People who punched the punching bag to distract themselves, for the purposes of being fit, were less angry than the venting group, but were not less aggressive. It seems that even if a person is thinking about something else, just the aggressive physical act of punching something leads the person to be more aggressive as a result. The most promising results could be seen in the participants who did nothing at all, rather than venting. This group demonstrated the lowest aggression and anger levels of all three groups.

It seems that if you ever become really angry, the worst possible thing you could do would be to vent your anger. As Bushman (2002) says, this would be similar to “using gasoline to put out a fire.” Venting your anger will only lead you to become more angry and more aggressive. Instead, the best possible advice would probably be to just continue with your life as normal; maybe engage in a favourite hobby or talk with friends, and take your mind off the anger. Do not follow what the movies tell you to do, and vent. It will only make you worse off.

Research references:
Bushman, B. J. (2002). Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame? Catharsis, rumination, distraction, anger, and aggressive responding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 724-731.
Hornberger, R. H. (1959). The differential reduction of aggressive responses as a function of interpolated activities. American Psychologist, 14, 354.

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