Anger Can Power Your Best Efforts

Happiness is contentment, but emotion and even angry emotion is what gets things done. Texas A&M psychologists report this somewhat surprising finding following their completion of six studies involving 1,000 plus participants and their analysis of survey responses from more than 1400 persons.

In each of the studies, an angry emotion was elicited in various ways including exposure to negative illustrations, generation of levels of frustration, and reaction to political situations. Performance was measured when participants were faced with a variety of challenges including puzzles, performing on a Nintendo Wii, responding quickly in a computer game, or by voting behavior as quantified in survey results.

The trend across the 6 studies was that the participants performed better when in the angry state. As examples, anger increased the numbers of puzzles solved and the reaction times in the computer games.

Anger and associated frustration can be a powerful motivator. As those most successful in science, business, and novel writing will tell you, the path to success is often facilitated by multiple failures along the way. In addition to showing what doesn’t work, these misfires also create stronger emotions that no doubt fuel efforts which eventually pay off.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-pspa0000350.pdf
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231030110823.htm

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