How Can I Manage My Anger?

Take our Anger Management Test

Find a therapist to heal from anger

Unmanaged anger can become destructive.

Managing anger internally may be of limited utility.

A new study provides evidence for the utility of an anger management technique that uses symbolic action.

Anger can be a dangerous emotional state. Uncontrolled, it can lead to violence, poor decision-making, and conflict. Unprocessed anger often leads to rumination, which in turn tends to increase the anger.

Controlling anger is an important, and often challenging, social skill. Work to date suggests that one key to anger control may be found in distancing one’s internal experience from one's sense of self. Such distancing can be achieved via cognitive reframing and distancing techniques, but these are effortful and may be less effective under stressful, emotionally "hot" conditions. Distraction may also work, but its effects tend to be transient.

Work to date in this area, moreover, has focused on such internal processes. This is limiting since studies on emotion regulation have shown that emotion is strongly tied to—and can be shaped and changed by—external conditions and behaviors. For instance, people may take a shower to "cool off" emotionally or hold on to someone's hand when they feel afraid.

Research on this action-emotion axis has shown that writing down anger may help in its management. The expressive writing technique has been shown to reduce anger in clinical settings. However, experimental work on this approach has been scarce.

Study of an Anger-Reduction Strategy

A recent (2024) study by Japanese psychologists Yuta Kanaya and Nobuyuki Kawai sought to explore this idea further, relying on a new anger-reduction strategy inspired by the situated cognition approach to emotion regulation, which holds that knowledge is inseparable from the context, culture, and activity in which it is acquired and used. The authors specifically hypothesized that “throwing an object associated with negative emotions (anger) may result in losing the negative emotions (anger).”

To test this idea, the authors conducted two studies. Participants were provoked to anger, and then were asked to write about it. Then, they threw the anger-written paper into a trash box (Experiment 1) or put the paper into a shredder (Experiment 2). The authors speculated that if anger reduction depended on the specific action, then they should see different results between the two studies, as they involve different disposal actions (throwing in Experiment 1; no throwing in Experiment 2). Conversely, if anger was affected merely by the meaning of disposal, then it should decrease equally in both conditions.

Study 1 involved a total of 50 students (women = 16; mean age = 21.10). Participants’ angry feelings were assessed with five adjective items (angry, bothered, annoyed, hostile, and irritated), and scores on these adjectives were averaged to form an anger experience composite used in the analysis. Participants' subjective emotional states were measured at baseline, post-provocation, and post-writing. To provoke anger, the participants were told to write an essay on a social problem and that their essay's quality would then be evaluated by a doctoral student. These evaluations, designed to be uniformly negative, were then provided to the participants to review. The participants were required to read the feedback and then write their thoughts on it, focusing on their emotions. Finally, the participants in the retention group turned their paper over, put in a clear plastic folder, and placed it on the right side of the desk. The participants in the disposal group rolled up the paper into a crumpled ball, stood up, and threw the paper into the trash can. Throughout the process, participants in both groups periodically completed questionnaires measuring their emotional states

The results showed that the retention group still showed significantly higher anger compared to baseline levels, while the disposal group completely eliminated their anger after the disposal of the anger-written paper. These results “suggest that the disposal of the paper containing ruminated anger into the trash can neutralize anger.”

The second experiment replicated the design of the first with a new sample of 48 participants (women = 24, mean age = 26.81), with important design changes: Participants of the retention group put the paper into a clear box on the desk, and the disposal group put the paper into the shredder. Results replicated those of Experiment 1. Subjective ratings of anger in both groups increased after provocation. Subjective ratings at post-writing decreased from post-provocation. However, those of the retention group were still higher than those of the baseline while those of the disposal group were eliminated at the same level as the baseline

How Can I Manage My Anger?

Take our Anger Management Test

Find a therapist to heal from anger

The authors conclude that the reduction in anger for the disposal group was achieved not by the sensorimotor experience of throwing the paper. Instead, "the meaning (interpretation) of disposal plays a critical role." The symbolic action of getting rid of the angry document appears to have done the trick. This study, they suggest, may point to a quick and easy way to manage subjective anger that can be applied across contexts, both in daily life and in therapy.

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