The varieties of anger

Bitterness. Hostility. Rage. The varieties of anger are endless. Some are mild, such as grumpiness, and others are powerful, such as wrath. Different angers vary not only in their intensity, but also in their purpose. It’s normal to feel exasperated with your screaming infant and scornful of a political opponent, but scorn towards your baby would be bizarre.

Anger is a large, diverse population of experiences and behaviours, as psychologists like myself who study emotion repeatedly discover. You can shout in anger, weep in anger, even smile in anger. You can throw a tantrum in anger with your heart pounding, or calmly plot your revenge. No single state of the face, body or brain defines anger. Variation is the norm.

The Russian language has two distinct concepts within what Americans call “anger” — one that’s directed at a person, called “serditsia”, and another that’s felt for more abstract reasons such as the political situation, known as “zlitsia”. The ancient Greeks distinguished quick bursts of temper from long-lasting wrath. German has three distinct angers, Mandarin has five and biblical Hebrew has seven.

In the past few weeks, many varieties of anger have been on vivid display. For starters, America now has an iconic angry man as its President-elect. Donald Trump is aggressive as he insists there’s something wrong with the country, and offensive when he’s provoked. He employs anger effectively to maintain his power and status. His anger is seen by his fans as strength and by his detractors as bombast.

We’ve also seen Hillary Clinton’s more restrained anger, which she has directed against the divisiveness she perceived during the campaign. To her proponents, Clinton’s anger fuelled her resolve to push back against Trump’s most egregious statements. To her detractors, her anger made her a shrew.

Americans, most likely, have also felt a wide range of angers throughout this presidential election. Perhaps they have been incensed at the perceived elitism of the 1 per cent who seem blind to their own privilege, arrogance and condescension. Perhaps they have felt outrage about the humiliation of women, minorities and immigrants. Perhaps they want to lash out against their fellow citizens on the other side of a gaping political divide, or at their own candidate for committing bone-headed errors in judgement.

Other varieties of anger involve frustration and helplessness. If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly by the powers that be and left behind economically, you feel this anger. If you shudder in anticipation that eight years of progress will be rolled back, or that other people will decide the fate of the planet and your children will suffer as a consequence, you also feel this anger.

Anger can distance people from one another, producing two sides of a vitriolic debate or leading people to isolate themselves from the nastiness. If the election prompted one to shut off the car radio, stop reading Twitter or sit in silence with one’s gnawing thoughts, then on ehas felt this anger.

But not all varieties of anger are divisive and destructive. Others are uplifting and constructive — an antidote to hopelessness. If you’re furious at the political situation, researchers have found, your anger may lead others to try to soothe you, strengthening your bonds with them. If you believe in a vision of America that has been demolished, the anger you share with other like-minded citizens can be empowering, scientists have discovered, and lead to collective action. This kind of anger can even create a community.

Buddhism teaches that anger is a form of ignorance, namely of other people’s points of view. If, in the midst of your fury, you can manage to see your opponents not as evil but as frustrated and trying to make a change, anger can actually cultivate empathy for the other side. In this sense, some angers are a form of wisdom.

Another constructive variety of anger can help in a contest, political or otherwise. Think about football players who intentionally cultivate anger before a game. They shout and jump and pump their fists in the air to get themselves in the right frame of mind for crushing the competition. Their aggression enhances their performance and tells their opponents to beware. That’s what happened in the 2016 American presidential election campaign. Voters worked themselves up into righteous anger and took action.

There’s even a constructive anger that’s delivered through humour. If you’ve watched late-night TV as comedians skewer political figures that you loathe, you’ve felt this anger and its cathartic effects.

America is a divided country, but it is united by anger. Its individual explosions are signals that the American people care strongly about something — that they are deeply invested — even if their angers are about different things. Some Americans are newly angry after the election. Others progressed from anger to delight when Trump prevailed. But if he acts contrary to their expectations, those joyful feelings might well transform into outrage once again.

— New York Times News Service

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, is the author of the forthcoming How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.