This thesis sought to identify and evaluate the effects of suppressing anger on cognition and behaviour from both naturalistic and laboratory approaches.  It was predicted that anger suppression places demands on valuable cognitive resources and it was predicted that this form of emotion regulation would have detrimental effects on thinking and reasoning abilities.  A naturalistic study examined records of everyday anger experiences (as documented in daily diaries) and showed that anger suppression had negative effects on participants’ self-reports of concentration, critical thinking, decision-making and accuracy in the formation of judgements.  The first laboratory experiment explored the effects of anger suppression on critical thinking and reasoning abilities through tests of analysis, evaluation and assumption.  The second laboratory experiment investigated performance on social reasoning skills utilising theory of mind tasks to assess interpersonal perception and inference abilities.  The results of the laboratory experiments showed that relative to expression, suppression was associated with superior cognitive performance on specific measures of critical and social reasoning.  Overall, the findings were inconsistent and did not provide full support for the proposal that regulating anger through suppression has detrimental cognitive effects, particularly with respect to critical thinking and reasoning abilities.  The implications of these findings and future directions for anger research are discussed.

The present thesis examined the effects of anger on the completeness and accuracy of eyewitness free and cued recall and recognition performance. Anger was revealed by a recent survey as the emotion experienced by the majority of eyewitnesses to crime, so is particularly important in this context. Previous literature has tended to use generic concepts such as ‘emotion’ or ‘stress’ to investigate emotion effects, but this thesis sought to examine the effect of the specific emotion of anger on memory. Experiment 1 tested theoretical predictions regarding the effects of anger on encoding and retrieval processes. In line with these predictions, angry participants provide more complete descriptions of a perpetrator compared to neutral participants. However, angry participants provide less complete descriptions of the perpetrator’s actions than their neutral counterparts. This pattern of results was replicated throughout all experiments in this thesis. Experiment 2 revealed that anger has no effect on the completeness and accuracy of victim descriptions. Experiment 3 found that the pattern of anger effects observed for a younger adult sample were also found when older adults were tested. This prompted a statistical comparison of younger and older adults which found very few age effects and no interactions between age of the participant, experience of anger and the category of detail recalled. The final experiment thoroughly investigated the effects of anger on participants’ ability to recognise the perpetrator from a photographic lineup. The main findings of this thesis suggest that while angry eyewitnesses may be able to provide a more complete description of the perpetrator, they may be less able to describe what he did, and less able to accurately recognise him from a lineup than neutral eyewitnesses. These findings are discussed in terms of cognitive and meta-cognitive models of encoding and retrieval.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This investigation studied the mode of hostility management in persons with essential hypertension. The mode of adjustment to hostile impulses of hypertensive persons was viewed as a defensive adaptation which was different from the normal mode. The hypothesized differences between these groups were to be observed under two conditions, one with and one without hostility arousal. Under both conditions it was predicted that the hypertensive would be over-inhibited with respect to expressions of hostility. In the first condition a higher level of inhibition and tension was expected to characterize the hypertensive group. Under the second condition greater change from the earlier levels of inhibition and tension were also expected to characterize the hypertensive group. The independent variable of essential hypertension was defined on the basis of presence or absence of a medical diagnosis of essential hypertension. The second independent variable was hostility arousal. The method employed was an adaptation of the Wisconsin card sort that involved punishment for failure [TRUNCATED]

Multiple studies have supported the link between anger and aggression. It is not uncommon for anger to result in aggressive acts, especially in children still learning socially appropriate ways of coping. Furthermore, childhood aggression is typically viewed as a concerning act that should be reduced or eliminated. However, some research shows that within pretend play, aggression can be adaptive. Studies have supported the Mastery/Catharsis hypothesis, the theory that aggression in pretend play acts as a release of emotions and processing of events, by showing that children who exhibit more aggression within their pretend play exhibit less aggression outside of play. Pretend play has been proposed as an adaptive coping mechanism for children. Although the literature supports the role of pretend play in coping with anxiety, the role of play in coping with anger has not previously been evaluated. The current study used a pretest/posttest design to evaluate the relationships between anger and aggression in pretend play and the role of aggression in pretend play in regulating anger in preschool aged children. Mood was measured at three time points: baseline measure prior to play or mood induction (Time 1), measure after the mood induction (Time 2), and after the condition manipulation (Time 3). Baseline measures of pretend play were also collected prior to the mood induction for all children. After the mood induction, half the participants participated in a measure of pretend play and the other half watched an emotionally neutral 5-minute video. Measures of mood were then collected again. Given the strong relationship between anger and aggression, it was hypothesized that anger would increase aggression in pretend play. Furthermore, according to the Mastery/Catharsis hypothesis engaging in aggression in pretend play should reduce anger. Therefore, it was hypothesized that participants in the treatment condition, who engaged in pretend play, would show a greater reduction in anger than children in the control group, who watched a neutral video. Results indicated that the mood induction resulted in a worse mood than the baseline mood. Furthermore, children engaged in more aggression in pretend play after being angered than prior to being angered. Finally, there were no significant differences in mood scores at the end of the study between the treatment and control groups. The present study developed a novel, effective, and mild negative mood induction procedure for preschoolers. Additionally, it found a relationship between anger and aggression in pretend play in preschoolers. Although the present study did not find pretend play was more effective in improving mood that the control condition, future studies should evaluate this relationship further as there were several extraneous variables that were not controlled for (e.g., emotion regulation abilities).

This project addresses the role of anger in violent crime committed by women, and alternatives that are currently available to manage this anger. This has been a neglected area of criminological research, partly because of women's lesser involvement in crime in general and violent crime in particular. The role of anger in violent crime committed by men has received considerable attention and treatment programs have been developed and evaluated. This has not happened to the same extent for women. This project addresses this deficit by reviewing the literature on anger experienced by women offenders. The project begins by critically examining theories explaining the development of anger expression in women in western society and how this differs from men. The focus then shifts to female offenders and a review of literature on feminist criminology. From the literature, issues are identified which need to be considered when developing women's anger management programs. At the policy level, current initiatives in women's policy development in the western world are explored. Finally recommendations are made for the future development of anger management programs for women in prison in South Australia.

Thesis (M.S.)--Central Connecticut State University, 2003. / Thesis advisor: Raymond Chip Tafrate. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Criminal Justice." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-26). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-131).

The aim of the present work has been to analyze the ways of adolescents’ anger expression and to estimate the relations between emotional and behavioral problems. There was collected data about 198 11-18 years old adolescents. In the research there were used YSR 11/18: Youth self – report (Achenbach, 1991), TRI - Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980) and STAXI – C/A– State - Trait Anger Expression Inventory – 2 For Children and Adolescents (Spielberger, 1999). The results of the research show that there is a positive correlation between anger expression index and internal behavioral problems (value of p is 0.00) and external behavioral problems (value of p is 0.00). Internal behavioral problems also correlate with anger as a state (value of p is 0.00), anger as a trait (value of p is 0.00), internal (value of p is 0.00) and external (value of p is 0.00) anger expression, internal anger control (value of p is 0.02). External behavioral problems correlate with anger as a state (value of p is 0.00), anger as a trait (value of p is 0.00) and external anger expression (value of p is 0.00). There was estimated a negative correlation between adolescents’ anger as a state and their competence (value of p is 0.02). A positive correlation estimated between external anger expression and social activity (value of p is 0.01). A positive correlation also estimated between internal anger control and learning (value of p is 0.03). Anger of adolescents is also related with... [to full text]

Longstanding political, social, and academic debates surrounding women’s anger have followed a distinct pattern. On one hand, critics disparage women for writing and speaking in an angry voice, casting them as bitter, irrational, or they assign them the pejorative “angry feminist”. Women often respond to these critiques by defending their anger, and reframe this emotional response as a legitimate response to oppression. Despite the utility of this intervention, this debate has given rise to a binary structure where a woman’s anger is either a legitimate response to oppression, or an irrational emotional response. As a result, the alternative functions to women’s anger remain largely unexplored. Working against binary logic, this dissertation aims to reframe this debate, and answer the following questions: what are the alternative functions for women’s anger outside of the binary terms of this debate? How can literary representations of anger complicate this conversation? Drawing from affect theory, intersectional feminist theory, discourse analysis, feminist discourse analysis, philosophical discussions about emotion, feminist literary theory, and ongoing debates surrounding nostalgia, this dissertation explores the function of anger within contemporary Canadian and American women’s literature. Before undertaking literary analysis in subsequent chapters, this dissertation first develops a methodology of “imperfect alignment” to account for the tensions between affect theory and discourse analysis, the theories and methods that guide this research project. The second chapter explores the ways anger allows liminal subjects to come into view in Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues and Morris’s A Dangerous Woman. Chapter three explores the ways anger can interrupt and complicate compassionate reader responses to gender based abuse in Sapphire’s Push and Mosionier’s In Search of April Raintree. Chapter four explores the ways anger and nostalgia allow subjugated groups to link anger to domestic violence in Joyce Carol Oates’s Foxfire and We Were the Mulvaneys. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a brief analysis of feminist critiques of reason, and locates the findings of this project in relation to this scholarship. Ultimately, this research project nuances debates surrounding anger, and poses alternative readings of this emotional response.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: B, page: 3489. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-249).