Anger is such an interesting experience in that (if this study is correct) we tend to actually lose agency while angry, but internally I think we actually believe we have dramatically increased agency in the moment. That's part of what makes anger so dangerous. We're basically at maximum stupid while angry. Do you ever get angry and suddenly feel a loss for words? Difficulty articulating arguments? Resorting to less effective and more hurtful strategies? Regretting it later? Anger, for the most part, is useless in most modern human interactions. I think it's the sort of thing that's good at convincing a brain that horrible acts are justifiable in the moment, such was killing in war or serious altercations. Anger and fear both seem like tools for survival in a world most of us no longer live in.
As for the ethical aspect... I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life, although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and fight these bullies. The best advice anyone ever gave me (Thanks Mr. McAneny) was that we aren't a tool of our anger, but instead, it's a tool of our creation. We're responsible for what we do with our anger, even if we're not the instigators. Anger typically leads to brutal solutions, both emotionally and physically, and it's so rare that this is necessary or remotely helpful. That really stuck with me.
I grew up with so many people telling me to use my anger against the bullies, and I think that reflects our cultural belief (or desire to believe) that our anger is justified, and what we do when we're angry is as well. I believe the truth is that it's almost never the correct response. The adults and peers around me who told me to embrace my anger probably didn't have a good understanding of why they believed that or perpetuated that belief.
All that is to say: We should stop believing in our anger so much, and start being responsible for what we do when we're angry. That seems like the most ethical solution.
In my life, I've suffered 3 robbery attempts, and been stabbed twice. Two times before I turned 17, while I was still living in Russia :-\
I was vehemently opposed to my father's attempts to make me carry a weapon since I was 14. I changed my mind after being stabbed for a second time, much more badly (and that happened the same year.)
First time, I was attacked by a gang of homeless orphaned children. It was like that: I just noticed them giving off some creepy sense of malice in their looks as I passed them on the street, and the very moment they left my field of vision I hear loud "knock" "knock" and feel being pushed from behind.
Somehow, I sent few of them flying within mere split seconds, despite never being into combat sports, nor being strong for my age. The next thing I remember was me running like I never ran before in my life.
The second time it happened, it was almost like in a movie. Being descended upon by 3 or possibly 4 huge dudes, all looking like "how proper gangsters look." I only remember them appearing out of the blue, being taken into chokehold from behind. But that time, I had a 40cm electrician screwdriver with me...
Whatever happened next, I will not speak until my deathbed, but that day my anger very likely saved me my life.
After my recovery (still from first attack, I was not injured in the second,) and finishing school exams, I applied for a student exchange programme in Singapore, and finally got the fuck out of that country at last.
I still thank god for making anger be. Anger and fury can some times be almost beautiful, turning ecstatic.
> we tend to actually lose agency while angry, but internally I think we actually believe we have dramatically increased agency in the moment
I mean, we do have increased agency, in a certain sense: we are far better at doing (or, at least, motivating ourselves to do, and keeping our executive functioning pointed toward doing without distractions) the things that "we" want to do when angry.
It's just that both the things "we" want when angry (our preferences), and the mechanisms "we" use to achieve those goals, aren't the same preferences and mechanisms we'd use normally. They're a subset, the parts of you that don't require any conscious deliberation to enact. Whatever parts of "you" are entirely implemented by conscious thought, those parts are temporarily excluded from the definition of the agent "you" when "you" are angry.
In the "Elephant and Rider" metaphor for thinking, when the rider steps off the elephant and lets the elephant run, the elephant becomes much better at doing elephant things. It isn't necessarily much better at doing "rider-and-elephant-as-system" things; it's probably worse at those. But if you need a pure-elephant solution to a problem, getting off the elephant can help.
In martial arts, for example, conscious deliberation is never desired. The rider is never as good at micromanaging the elephant's movements as the elephant is at moving itself. "You"—the rider—want to train "yourself"—the elephant—to move this way reflexively; such that, in a real fight, you can let loose the elephant, and the elephant can solve your problem.
Ive read some of the book "The Art of Empathy", in which the author describes anger as "the prideful sentry." I like this way of thinking about it.
Clearly, any emotion when taken to the extreme is bad, and anger is perhaps the most obvious example -- yet I would hesitate to call its existence useless, even in a modern context. Anger & pride both have functions as "alarm systems" for circumstances which would be detrimental to certain things we value.
EDIT: I now realize that your original comment was not presenting such a black-and-white view of the subject as I originally perceived. Keeping my comment above in tact for historical purposes
I agree. No emotion or sensation is 'useless', because they all serve to tell us about what's going on inside and around us. I suppose that's the key here. We can listen to anger and fear all day, but we don't have to connect that high-charge wire to whatever machine it's telling us to. It's really important to observe the feelings and not let it get out of control. It's also critical to understand why the feeling came, how it developed, and what it means about ourselves. I think those two parts are often ignored.
The same can even be said for attraction which can lead to crazy infatuation, or the desire to relax which can lead to chronically getting nothing done. Mostly these are very positive thoughts and feelings in moderation, so it's also difficult to observe and reconsider in the moment. Fear and anger are very important as well, but the product of both can be devastating when unregulated.
This is hard to teach to kids. I have kids, and one of them actually gets angry far too easily - maybe even more than I did as a kid. Trying to explain the idea of being responsible for what his anger leads to feels like a Sisyphean task at times. It's so important to me though to have them understand that ultimately, they decide how they react to what happens to them or around them. And of course the same applies to all those other feelings. People are complicated.
> It's really important to observe the feelings and not let it get out of control. It's also critical to understand why the feeling came, how it developed, and what it means about ourselves.
You just described Emotional intelligence, which I gained by practising Yoga, meditation and stoicism. I used to be neurotic and my anxieties ruled me. I didn't get angry often but when I did it was explosive. People were often surprised cause they never thought I could be like that. Three years ago, burnt out, feeling empty and seeking purpose, I quit working and began searching. Trust me when I say that I had no idea what I was searching for. I just needed to search for 'meaning' and purpose. It led me to yoga and meditation and my life began to change. I started to gain Emotional intelligence and better control of my nerves. It was like I was born again. My anger outbursts slowly disappead. I able to observe About a year after I began yoga and meditation, I got a copy of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and I got even better. After 3 years I went back to work.
I practice yoga and meditation with my kid. It was hard at first, but I tried to make it fun for her. Now she enjoys it. I teach her about Emotional intelligence and read the daily Stoic with her when I can. She loves Epictetus :)
Hard to teach kids? Can you rule out it being impossible for everyone, except for individual cases like yours where highly motivated circumstance intersect with opportunity to learn them?
In other words, you're talking about exploiting centuries of cross-disciplinary not always intuitive wisdom.
First, would anyone be able to arrive at these conclusions and how to efficiently implement them in time to help themselves?
If not, we require learning reading in school but not learning to read this stuff, so who would think to study it unless there was specific cultural awareness?
Last chance, lucky for you your dad will suggest it. Not so lucky though, almost anyone telling you to change your life in a direction you're not seeking will sound like a dumbass peddling koolaid.
Is the last nail in the coffin it's sometimes counterintuitive? Why should a person not think, sounds nice dumbass (temper trolling, I apologize), but you've got no way to prove it's going to on my non-sheep smart brain.
And you can't prove it really, with any certainty. Despite the irony that the smarter and less sheeplike s/he is the more successful they are likely to be with it (speculation).
Loved the root comment/anecdote though, one cynical point doesn't change that. It's probably a rare beast, a comment that could add value years from now - no shelf life, on a tech site even.
I've heard Brene Brown call anger a "catalytic" emotion. It's supposed to tell us when we've been wronged or something is harmful to us in the environment, but then it's then up to us to step back, evaluate the situation rationally, and figure out exactly what's wrong and what can we do to remove ourselves from the harmful situation. In other words, anger's supposed to be a spur to action: if you just sit their stewing, you are missing the point. And if you just impulsively react, you're heeding the anger but probably not taking the most effective course you could be.
> " Anger and fear both seem like tools for survival in a world most of us no longer live in."
i've come to settle on a mental model of fear being the driver of anger. when someone gets angry, a (perceived) threat typically underlies the anger. and anger is a way of overcoming conventional social norms to unleash energy to counter the threat.
sometimes the threat is simply to the ego of the angered person. this helps me understand my own anger, which can be confounding at times.
Anger is extremely useful - as are all other emotions. They are all motivators, impetus, etc. They get you going in a general direction which in many cases the outcome is what you desired when the impulse first hit you but it's only a general direction, there's always path to sate the desires that bubble up with minimal damage to things you care about.
Your emotions will always serve a purpose, you just have to control them and think about what you really want.
The corollary to how anger manifests itself in the one who is angry is how it's perceived to the one on the receiving end of the anger. I can't find the reference but I believe it was in Pinker's "The Blank Slate" where he discusses the effect, citing other research.
It boiled down to the fact that because an angry person is not in control of their actions the recipient's theory of mind about the angry person is effectively thrown out the window and thus one can't predict what the angry person might do. Consequently your best bet is to exit the situation as quickly as possible to minimize any risk to yourself or loved ones.
> "I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life, although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and fight these bullies."
Look into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It comes with ADHD, but it can exist on its own or with other uncommon neurologies.
one of the life lessons that online games taught me was that when angry or otherwise highly emotional, stop playing and walk away until I am level headed again (no matter how much I think action is needed to fix something). Otherwise, I'll make a series of even more bad decisions.
Having the ability, and confidence, to dispassionately have discussions and ask questions while experiencing anger (or fear) is a very empowering life skill, and it takes practice.
Posted title is clickbait. Actual title: "People's Sense of Control Over Their Actions Is Reduced At A Fundamental Level When They're Angry Or Afraid."
What the article actually says is that when people are angry or afraid, they don't believe as strongly that their actions are within their control. This seems like one of those "well, duh" kind of studies, but it's pretty interesting, because it lends credence to the "crime of passion" defense in law.
From the first paragraph: "...they often say that... they didn’t feel responsible for those actions – they “lost control”.... In the UK, under certain circumstances, a person accused of murder can even claim that this “loss of control” led to them killing their victim. If successful, this defence can reduce charges to manslaughter."
I am surprised at this line defense (not a lawyer, of course).
At the risk of creating a falsely binary division, either we are (at least most of the time) responsible adults or we are not. If we are, then we are responsible for our actions - even if our faculties are temporarily impaired, at least by virtue of actions we took. For example, driving while under the influence.
If we are not, then why do we have other privileges, such as voting, being able to care for children, etc?
Of course, there are middle grounds of various kinds and the law must find and work with these. Any sort of diminished capacity defence, e.g., by virtue of illness (e.g., depression), by virtue of mental disability, etc.
It seems to me that these middle grounds arise because there are discernible pathologies that give rise to diminished capacity. That seems reasonable.
Where the UK defence seems odd, seems to fly in the face of responsibility, is that there is no pathology. Someone got angry and lost control.
But anger is a choice. With the possible exception of the immature, of the previously mentioned disabled, and of cases involving actual physical contact (where someone isn't respecting your boundaries and your expressed wish that they back off), we choose anger as our response. It can be very hard to control this choice, but we are choosing to allow anger to rise.
Once we make that choice, we are responsible for what comes next. IM(NS)HO. YMMV. IANAL. Etc.
About jurisprudential tool from modern Russia's early years:
An interesting solution to the dilemma in your last paragraph was invented by people who wrote first laws after USSR collapsed.
While any kind of self defence was forbidden by law, moreover lethal one, it was expected that in a moment of mortal danger, a person temporarily looses his mental fitness for legal purposes, thus having no responsibility for his actions during that.
Isn't there a distinction between manslaughter and a premeditated murder in most jurisdictions? Where I'm from, impulsively killing someone in a burst of anger ("a crime of passion") is definitely different from a cold-blooded murder in the eyes of the law.
In the US, premeditation is the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder.
Manslaughter is a lesser offense, for when there was no intent of homicide but the perpetrator is nonetheless responsible: say someone decides to juggle axes on a balcony and drops one on someone’s head.
Probably most of the time, but not in extreme cases. Maybe the anger that you experienced always fell within these boundaries.
Have you ever had a situation where your whole world fell apart?
In some extreme situations, your brain seems to be unable to process what is going on. Everything feels like a bad dream, not real. In such a situation, you can have a trigger where all of a sudden it feels like your brain is short-circuiting. There is no reasoning at that point, all you can do is try to keep it together as much as possible. I hope you never need to experience this. But anyone who did experience this, understands how tragedies can happen in the worst circumstances.
I'm a cyclist. This study might explain the sheer number of drivers who tell me that they passed me dangerously because I gave them "no choice".
When stopped at stoplights, I've told some of these drivers that they always can choose to wait until a safe time to pass, but many drivers scoff at this as if it's not a realistic option. Perhaps 95% of the time when I'm riding a driver wouldn't have to wait more than 30 seconds. (Maybe longer for other cyclists since I try to minimize this.) The fact that I so frequently catch up with these drivers at stop lights should be a clue to them that I often do not slow them down (i.e., stoplights are the bottleneck), but in my experience mentioning that tends to make an already angry driver angrier.
So far I don't think I've made much progress convincing dangerous drivers to drive better by talking to them, but I now have a much better understanding of their concerns.
If you are from US, I'm guessing the real problem is that most of those drivers never take the bicycle, and so have no clue of what it feels like.
I had the reverse. I drove my bike a lot when I was a teenager. Once I started driving at 18, I realized I did a lot of dangerous things with my bike.
The best thing is such situation is let the other person experience what it's like.
I'm guessing you also drive a car, so you know both situations. But from what I can tell, US drivers have no real experience with riding bicycles in traffic. And the times I was in US, I certainly don't want to ride a bike on most of those roads.
Is it just sense of control or actual control reduced? E.g. I generally am very mindful, calm and kind person but I can remember a couple of times in my life when I was driven so mad (e.g. when guys were bullying me at school I could go "berserk" and attack) or so scared (e.g. I once walked a bad city district at night alone and 2 zombies approached, kind of junkies perhaps, looked like real ghouls, so I ran away) that I was acting unconsciously and impulsively. From the consciousness point of view it felt like it was turned off and I wasn't in control any more, like in a non-lucid dream.
Now take 2 parts mass media profit seeking, incomplete information, and an fear inducing event and stir them together. It’s no wonder we panic and go to war so easily.
> I am never here …. Never that is fully in possession, but somehow in a position to forestall ill-advised moves…. Patrolling is, in fact, my principal occupation….. No matter how tight Security, I am always somewhere Outside giving orders and Inside this strait jacket of jelly that gives and stretches but always reforms ahead of every movement, thought, impulse, stamped with the seal of alien inspection….
Alcohol, probably. Maybe also/or heroin. And he'd just returned from South America, where he'd been chasing (unsuccessfully, I've read) some young guy. And where he did, I gather, ayahuasca, maybe a few times. So he was probably crazier than usual.
But anyway, it was indeed horrible that he shot his wife. But for whatever it's worth, it was a formative event in his career as a writer. As I recall, he credited it as the formative event in his career.
And to your point, it was arguably one of the things that he had in mind when writing that.
I've always thought that anger was a direct result of being afraid. When we are afraid we have a number of feelings that are put forth as a result. Depending on why we are afraid we then use anger as a tool to get past the situation.
Also once we feel threaten and afraid we immediately fall into protection mode where our innate behavior is exhibited. You can think of our 4-5-year-old self as a sample. Things like selfishness, anger and doing what we can to get the upper hand, starts to be seen in us.
If you think about it, it takes a lot of years of teaching by society and parents to keeps us from being selfish, angry and whatever basic instincts we have. But even with that, we all fall into those modes when threaten and we are afraid.
Since neither the article nor the comments have mentioned game theory, I will mention it.
A game-theoretic threat is a statement that, if you do something that hurts me (and might benefit you), then I will do a thing that hurts both of us. It's clear why "hurting you" is a critical part of the threatened action; the reason "hurting me" is included is that if it benefited me, then we'd assume I would do it anyway. The puzzle of the threat is then, how can I convince you I'll do something that will hurt me? Well, if I could modify my brain such that I will be determined to do something violent to you even at great risk to myself, that would be a great solution. Anger is an emotion that does exactly this. Even better, if it is generally understood that any violations of my body (or whatever I want to protect) will trigger an anger response in me, then I don't have to make specific statements towards people I come across.
One can imagine variations on this: (a) if you know someone else has an anger response, and you want to do something that you're worried might trigger it, then maybe you can do a light-touched version of it and see if you can detect the beginnings of their anger response; (b) if you get into fights too often, you might give a "warning" (growl) response first.
It's interesting to think how these things might have evolved, because there are two sides to them. Anger is useless—counterproductive, in fact—if no one else understands before they act that you might become angry. And if anger doesn't exist, then detecting anger wouldn't be a useful trait. What came first, then? I would guess that some animals evolved a fight-or-flight response to deal with predators (because that increases survival chances), and the triggering mechanism was probably clumsy enough that it happened in non-life-threatening scenarios and caused needless violence (with negative expected value to all parties), and that led to animals either being able to see the early stages of fight-or-flight, or having a sense of what will trigger fight-or-flight and avoiding doing those things (unless they plan to win the fight). (The fight-or-flight response is probably reasonably obvious to observe—muscles tensing, freezing or making sudden movements, etc.—so at least predators should have gotten good at noticing it, to become more efficient.)
I don't know what research has been done on the evolutionary origins of anger. But it makes so much game-theoretic sense—and I have the impression that mammals in general have an anger response; quick googling gives mixed results about reptiles—that I'm very confident that what we would call anger evolved because it was useful for backing up an implicit threat of "don't violate my body or other things important to me, or else I will become violent". Yet I didn't see any discussion of evolution or game theory in either the article or the study. Those would seem to be important for forming hypotheses and interpreting results.
Anyway, for the threat to work, the "I will become violent" must be a strong compulsion (taking away the choice to not carry out the threat) and/or value-adjustment (so carrying out the threat now looks like the best thing to do). Either might subjectively feel like a loss of control, or not. Given that evolution has successfully implemented this feature, the subjective feeling seems like an implementation detail to me—maybe useful in learning to manage your own anger response.
It's about energy. Anger and fear boost energy temporarily, probably evolved for survival. That's all there is to it, something to do with motivation. For example, when in anger you won't procrastinate which otherwise would be almost impossible to beat.
You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an illusion. Thus, my emotional state tends to rarely get angry compared to when I thought free will was a possibility. Since understanding there isn't any control over anything makes me realize what can a person reasonably blame others or themselves if nobody has any choice over how they came to be or act. I don't necessarily gain control but I'm more functioning in society than before. That's typically the goal for everyone because than we have a better living experience.
> You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an illusion.
This is facile, and you certainly haven't proven the absence of free will just bey stating it here.
I believe the best assumption, since we feel as though e have free will, is to behave as though we and other people (and animals) have free will.
But aside from that, the fine article isn't really saying anything new. It's a known thing that anger has a dis-inhibiting effect. IIRC, it bypasses the prefrontal cortex in favour of the limbic system.
This is why so many religions and philosophies (esp Buddhism) warn us about the dangers of acting on our anger.
Anger makes us do ill considered things, and we often harm people and regret it later.
There are some interesting arguments that we'd be better off not assuming free will. Yuval Noah Harari (of Sapiens fame) talks about it quite a bit. He mentions his stance briefly in this interview https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/05/yuval-noah-h... , but he goes into it deeper in his books. One of his main points is that, as neuroscience and AI get better, external actors to you are able to "understand you better than you understand yourself" and basically start to program you. People are already concerned that this is happening to some degree (the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example), and it's likely to get more and more severe as technology improves. And one of his big points is that the people who believe most in the sovereignty of their own will will be least likely to protect themselves from such outside influences.
I agree there would be a large moral shift, and it kind of boggles my mind to try to think about it, but I don't think it's necessarily untenable.
Taking the candy bar example, in current society, even someone who doesn't believe in free will probably won't steal a candy bar, since there's a good chance they'll get caught, and then shamed and fined. There can still be a system of rules without a sense of free will.
The mindset would probably affect every aspect of life, but just looking at criminal justice, my intuition is that we would reduce how retributive it is, and switch to something more rehabilitation focused. Then again, it's hard to imagine what the knock on effects of that would be. I could see it going too far and getting exploited. Still, I'd be happy to see society experiment with moves that direction.
Oh, I thought the article was about psychology and where what we have studied illustrates determinism and where nothing has ever shown free will. I mean even what comes out of neuroscience shows how the brain reacts before we're even aware. Free will is an impossibility, how can oneself make choice or decisions that are unaffected by the external forces exerted upon oneself. One's birth being the "starting point" into reality is all that decides everything until the end.
He should have just invented another word for his interpretation of what he defines as free will. Otherwise it creates confusion for people who assume they're making their own choice and without understanding the choice was derived from all the external forces upon oneself; where nobody has any control in what the future experiences shall be.
Why even bother trying to explain something to others if free will is an illusion? What are you relying on to persuade them if they don't have a mind capable of understanding you?
Indeed. Even if you don't believe in it at a philosophical level, you don't exactly have any choice in the matter. We all behave as if we have free will -- the only alternative would be to just stop doing anything (e.g. being catatonic).
I personally believe in free will, but persuasion and learning can still exist even if free will doesn't. It could be argued that people's deterministic reactions led to them reading something someone else posted and that leads to their mind changing. Memes and movements would exist even without free will. It happens in experiments on simple organisms that arguably lack free will (those with very narrow and predictable behaviors).
Some of HN understands hard determinism and once in awhile I see an interesting post. Otherwise it's just a comment triggered from reading the article. I enjoy it.
As for the ethical aspect... I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life, although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and fight these bullies. The best advice anyone ever gave me (Thanks Mr. McAneny) was that we aren't a tool of our anger, but instead, it's a tool of our creation. We're responsible for what we do with our anger, even if we're not the instigators. Anger typically leads to brutal solutions, both emotionally and physically, and it's so rare that this is necessary or remotely helpful. That really stuck with me.
I grew up with so many people telling me to use my anger against the bullies, and I think that reflects our cultural belief (or desire to believe) that our anger is justified, and what we do when we're angry is as well. I believe the truth is that it's almost never the correct response. The adults and peers around me who told me to embrace my anger probably didn't have a good understanding of why they believed that or perpetuated that belief.
All that is to say: We should stop believing in our anger so much, and start being responsible for what we do when we're angry. That seems like the most ethical solution.