Author:

Keywords:

anger, behavior taxonomy, anger-related behaviors, intensity of emotion, coping, behavioral inhibition, aggression, appraisal, emotion, Social Sciences, Psychology, Experimental, Psychology, Social, Psychology, APPRAISAL, AGGRESSION, EMOTION, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Social Psychology, 5202 Biological psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

In 2 studies, we investigated the occurrence of anger-related behaviors and their relationship to emotional, performance-related, and situational variables. In the first study, we constructed a comprehensive taxonomy of behaviors associated with anger, and we examined the occurrence of the resulting behavior categories as a function of several independent variables. A total of 8 distinct behavior categories were identified, 3 aggressive and 5 nonaggressive. Our results also demonstrated that fight (including both verbal and physical aggression) and flight behaviors occurred most frequently. Physical aggression, however, occurred most frequently in an inhibited form, in response to the emotion of anger (as compared to the emotion of irritation), and when the anger was intense. A second study was conducted to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1. The results suggest that the taxonomy, as derived in Study 1, is comprehensive and allows for a reliable categorization. Moreover, it appeared that fight and flight behaviors occurred most frequently if the target at whom one is angry was present.