How to Use Anger and Accomplish Goals

Source: Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

I suspect that plenty of resolutions will focus on emotional and mental health. In particular, many people may resolve to reduce the amount of anger in their day-to-day lives. But is this the wise approach?

Some people struggle to contain their anger. You may be one of them. If you search on this website, you’ll see an array of posts dedicated to the theme of managing anger, and resolving the pernicious effects. This makes sense because if people let their anger get out of hand, it can lead to dysfunctional relationships, tremendous inner suffering, and in the worst cases, extreme violence and aggression. Anger often precedes these terrible outcomes, which is why people presume that the best solution is to minimize their anger.

However, research also suggests that the problem with experiencing anger is not the emotion itself. It’s our lack of self-control. Anger leads to destructive outcomes because we don’t utilize it properly. I often tell my students that it is unwise to think of negative emotions as inner demons that we should neutralize. Emotions (either positive or negative) are more like tools in a psychological tool belt. That is, they are functional. By attempting to diminish our anger, we deprive ourselves of emotional software that we could use to achieve our desired goals. Perhaps another solution is not to reduce anger but to channel or harness it properly.

Anger and Goal Achievement

Based on the idea that anger can be functional, a team of researchers studied whether experiencing anger is associated with goal achievement. They ran several experiments in which some participants were made to experience more anger (by doing things like looking at the faces of angry people) while others were in a control group or experienced other emotions such as sadness, amusement, or desire. Then the researchers measured how well participants did at solving puzzles, playing a video game, or doing a reaction time task. In general, participants fared better when they experienced anger compared with other emotional states. Correlational evidence also showed that participants were more likely to vote in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections to the extent that they anticipated feeling angry if their preferred candidate (Trump, Biden) lost the election. Anger motivated people to vote, while other emotions, such as fear, did not.

A Nuanced View Toward Anger

Before we conclude that anger is always positive, the researchers also found that when people were angry, they were also more dishonest. Specifically, participants in an experiment were more likely to cheat and claim they had solved more puzzles to win prizes. This result, consistent with other studies, shows how anger can lead to antisocial and destructive outcomes. But this is only part of the picture because the research also showed how anger can lead to positive outcomes.

That’s why I appreciated reading the authors’ conclusion at the end of this paper, which was nuanced and thoughtful:

Do emotions help or hurt human reasoning and functioning? We offer a preliminary answer to this age-old question for anger: “it depends.”

Experiencing anger may be adaptive or maladaptive depending on other factors such as self-control, whether the desired goal is prosocial, or what opportunities exist to solve problems. It would be interesting to see whether people were better able to accomplish personal goals as a function of anger, such as maintaining a healthy diet or exercise routine, achievement in competitions like sports or chess, or earning income, all of which were not measured in this study. In some situations, anger can be empowering. I benefit from anger when I need a bit of extra motivation to complete a workout at the end of a long day, and sometimes I find that anger helps me accomplish workplace tasks that would otherwise take longer to do. But there may be downsides to anger in those situations that I am less mindful of. Hopefully, more research can help us illuminate some of those blind spots.

Anger can also help to mobilize people for political causes or social movements. This is especially apparent in protests and countercultural or populist movements. However, many political scientists frown upon anger, viewing it as something that drives negative polarization. Can we reconcile these perspectives? Perhaps the emotion of anger itself is not the actual problem, per se. Maybe we need to get better at channeling our anger to help improve our communities rather than win political victories. Another possibility is that political anger arises due to aspects of the system we have. Maybe people would feel less partisan anger if we had a multi-party system or open primary elections. Finally, perhaps there are different outcomes for anger when it is felt by constituents compared to when it is felt by politicians or leaders.

Conclusion

Often we face challenges. Anger may motivate people to work hard and thus overcome those challenges. It doesn’t make sense to think of emotions as something that we experience passively because emotions exist to spark movement. It makes more sense for people to experience emotions like anger if they have trouble achieving their goals. The healthy response to this would be to try to focus on utilizing anger constructively, rather than trying to reduce emotions. This New Year's, I suggest reframing your thoughts involving anger to use this emotion for healthy, prosocial goal achievement.