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Bite Me! The Anger Post

November 25, 2022 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Anger is defined as a strong feeling of displeasure or hostility. It’s considered by Paul Ekman, among others, to be one of six basic emotions, the others being surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. (I have issues with Paul Ekman and his take on emotions, but so be it.)

There are many gradations and flavors of anger. In no particular order (and definitely not an exhaustive list):

  1. annoyance
  2. rage
  3. frustration
  4. contrariness
  5. bitterness
  6. fury
  7. irritation
  8. resentment
  9. resistance
  10. vengeance
  11. agitation
  12. outrage
  13. disgruntlement
  14. vexation
  15. grumpiness

There are numerous theories and opinions about anger, some of which quite honestly just seem to be fabricated. I think we tend to interpret anger primarily based on our personal response to it. Someone’s agitation, for example, might be easy for one person to ignore, but another person might feel uncomfortable or even threatened by it; they might perceive it to be something stronger, such as outrage. If anger activates your brain’s threat detection system, you’re bound to have a lower tolerance for it than someone else might have.

An organization promoting a Buddhist perspective made the claim that anger was delusional. I responded that the relentless pursuit of happiness is far more delusional, not to mention destructive. Why is there so much less concern about that?

In addition, a wide variety of mental and emotional states are commonly interpreted as expressions of anger: excitement, unbridled enthusiasm, intensity, insistence or persistence, directness, and even passion or passionate engagement.

Feeling vs. Doing

 “The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.” —Edward Abbey

Anger tends to be viewed, more often than not, as a negative emotion, something that needs to be “managed,” like time (good luck with that). The emotion of anger is also frequently conflated with the expression of anger (aggression), as if you can’t have one without the other. It’s probably the verbal or physical expression of anger that people want to manage and not the actual emotion.

It’s true that the Latin root of the word emotion is emovere, which means “move out, remove, agitate.” More recently neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Lisa Feldman Barrett have described emotions as providing information from the body/brain to conscious awareness. Damasio refers to them as homeostatic indicators. Are things going well or is something amiss? The purpose of this information is to assist us in determining if we want to do something to adjust our current condition.

We don’t have to respond to sadness by weeping uncontrollably or crawling into bed for the duration just as we don’t have to respond to anger by throwing or smashing things or pushing other people around. Emotions let us know what is going on with us and give us an opportunity to acknowledge that and determine what, if any, action we want to take. In a way, all emotions are somewhat agitating since they’re intended to get at least some of our attention.

State vs. Trait

It’s important to make the distinction between states (or incidences) of experiencing anger (reacting to being cut off while driving or to having someone else take credit for your work or good idea) and the trait of anger (a tendency to be pissed off by the mildest—or sometimes even positive—provocation). Given enough incitement, anyone can experience anger. But for some of us, anger comes preloaded; it’s our default emotional response.

Defaulting to anger has consequences, of course. My experience is that being so familiar with anger, I tend not to be blown away by someone else’s expression of anger. I may or may not like it or approve of it, but I’m rarely freaked out by it. I don’t automatically equate anger with danger or even discomfort, so I have a higher tolerance for it. Those with a low tolerance for anger appear to more quickly or easily interpret intensity or directness as anger.

The downside of defaulting to anger is that it can feel very compelling, energizing, motivating and even righteous. That can lead to stewing in angry juices at the very least or taking ill-advised action that can be destructive or hurtful. I got a handle first on not acting on anger and then on not automatically expressing it. That left me with the inner experience of stewing in angry juices, which I did not enjoy! But eventually I gained greater control over that, too.

Hide and Seek

Deciding to limit the stewing helped me recognize a significant fact of life: I was probably not going to stop having the impulse to anger, given I’d been having it since infancy, but I could alter the effect it had on me. I didn’t have to run with it. I could change, but there were limits to what I could change.

There’s a fairly widespread notion that anger is a “secondary” emotion—that it’s covering up something else, something we don’t want to experience or express, as if emotions are under our immediate control. As if we choose to experience one emotion instead of another. If you understand how the brain works and how slow ordinary consciousness is compared to the unconscious you realize how impossible this is.

I’ve tried to locate the source of the secondary emotion idea, but so far haven’t been successful. Ultimately, I don’t think it matters where it came from. What does matter is that it’s been absorbed as a fact by many psychologists, therapists, and people in general in spite of the fact that it makes no sense from a survival standpoint.

It doesn’t make sense from a homeostatic indicator standpoint, either. There is nothing at all to be gained by being forced to figure out how we’re really feeling while we’re in the grip of another—entirely different—strong emotion. That’s like being provided with intentionally obscure or misleading information. The brain doesn’t work like that, either.

Deception vs. Self-Deception

I suspect the secondary emotion idea is an attempt to cut anger down to size, so to speak. So-and-so isn’t really angry; he or she is actually sad or anxious or depressed or afraid or hurt: wounded in some manner. They’re not threatening; they’re vulnerable. You wish! (Sorry; couldn’t resist.)

Obviously, it’s possible to behave in a hostile or combative manner without experiencing the emotion of anger. Just like it’s entirely possible to behave in a pleasant and congenial manner without experiencing friendly feelings toward one’s companions. We do it all the time. We can also express interest in something someone else is talking about when we not only don’t care but fervently wish they would shut up right now. When we act one way while we’re feeling something else, we know we’re doing it. We have a good idea of what we’re feeling in spite of the fact that we’re not acting in accord with it. We’re hiding our emotions from others but not from ourselves.

The secondary emotion promoters want us to believe that when we’re experiencing anger, however, we’re hiding our emotions from ourselves.

Fortunately, not everyone subscribes to the secondary emotion theory. And, anyway, the most important thing to remember about emotion, any emotion, is that you have no idea what I’m feeling, and I have no idea what you’re feeling. Instead of making assumptions and interpretations based on our own biased perceptions or beliefs (if that happened to me or if I were in that situation or did that, I would be feeling [fill in the blank]), we could instead be curious—about both ourselves and others. We could check in; we could ask.

On a side note, being comfortable with a wide range of emotions has many benefits and few downsides.

Filed Under: Brain, Curiosity, Living, Mind, Mindset Tagged With: Anger, Emotions, Making Distinctions

Conspiracy: Making Distinctions

June 2, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

While the brain is quite good at categorizing, it is not very adept at making distinctions. (Much like the human brain, neither is Google.)

We encounter this problem in the area of personality or temperament. Just because behavior X is a characteristic of a particular group of people doesn’t mean that every individual in that group will demonstrate behavior X. Believing that everyone in a group demonstrates all of the same characteristics is the basis of stereotyping.

So the problem also routinely arises in regard to ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, age, and political preference, among others.

Categorizing is an automatic System 1 (unconscious) process. Distinguishing is a System 2 (conscious) process that requires intention, attention, and effort. Categorizing is easy; confirmation bias makes it feel right. Eventually tracks are laid down in the brain that carry us along effortlessly. We have no reason to question our perception. Distinguishing is hard and generates cognitive dissonance, which does not feel good.

Making distinctions after those tracks have been laid down in the brain is called change. Changing our perception of another person or group of people may alter our perception of ourselves, as well. Our sense of self is a construct; our beliefs are one of the things that contribute to that construct. And our brain takes our sense of self very seriously. Changing a belief, therefore, is not a small matter.

What Is Up with Conspiracists?

All of that is by way of getting to some recent thoughts about conspiracy theories currently being floated and about those who have bought into them so completely that they see “evidence” for them everywhere. These people appear to be living in a very different world than I’m living in. If I didn’t already know something about the extent to which we create our own reality, I would have concluded either they are delusional or I am.

But I know that our brains do not allow us to experience reality first-hand or directly. We have to be trained even to be able to see what’s out there. So while there are no doubt extreme conspiracy theorists who are—or border on being—delusional, most of them are simply processing the world differently from the way I process it. And that interests me.

When I started exploring the subject from a psycho-social, neurological, philosophical, and historical perspective, I accessed a few resources I already had. And then I turned to Google, which does a great job of categorizing everything related to conspiracy, but is absolutely abysmal at distinguishing between conspiracy and conspiracy theory.

They are definitely not the same thing. Conspiracies do exist. Conspiracy theories are speculations. Furthermore, the word theory has a broad definition. A conspiracy theory is not the equivalent of a scientific theory, which is the result of research, evidence, and consensus. Good scientists modify or even abandon their theories when new information is uncovered. Conspiracists either reject conflicting information out of hand or expand the theory to incorporate it. More importantly, scientific theories are falsifiable; conspiracy theories are not.

Understanding the Concepts

Here are some definitions (from freedictionary.com):

Conspiracy: (1) an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act, (2) an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action, (3) a joining or acting together, as if by sinister design.

Examples of conspiracies: Watergate, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis

Conspiracy Theory: a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act.

Examples of conspiracy theories: JFK’s Assassination (various), Moon Landing (didn’t happen), Illuminati (alien shapeshifters who run the world)

Looking for Answers

Some of the questions I’m hoping to answer for myself include:

  • Who believes conspiracy theories? Are some people more temperamentally inclined to believe them than others?
  • If a large percentage of a population believes in conspiracy theories, does that have an effect on actual conspiracies (committing or uncovering them, for example)?
  • What’s going on in the brains of conspiracists vs. non-conspiracists?
  • Are different groups of people more inclined to believe particular conspiracy theories than others—and does it matter?
  • How do conspiracy theories affect real-world outcomes?
  • How can we distinguish possible from highly improbable conspiracies?

I’ll share what I learn. I’m compiling some useful articles on the topic that I will eventually put into a shareable format for anyone who is interested.

I believe this is a timely subject that bridges brain, behavior, and change. And I hope that exploring it may lead to some measure of understanding. We could surely use more of that in our troubled world. What do you think?

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Cognitive Biases, Consciousness, Meaning, Mental Lens, Mind, Unconscious Tagged With: Brain, Categorizing, Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories, Making Distinctions, Mind

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