How many times have we been told not to make a decision when we are angry? How many of us have written a nasty or angry letter only to put it in the drawer so that we can decide whether to really send it once we have calmed down?

 It now seems that such behaviors are not in our best interests. From a study conducted by Wesley Moons, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara and his colleague Diane Mackie, these researchers concluded that “anger actually seems to help people make better choices – even aiding those who are usually very poor at thinking rationally.” (“Anger Fuels Better Decisions” by Melinda Wenner, Live Science posted June 11, 2007 at 8:01 am ET). These researchers think it “could be because angry people base their decisions on the cues that “really matter” rather than things that can be called irrelevant or a distraction.” (Id.)

 Using two groups of college students for their experiments, the researchers induced anger in the first group before beginning the experiment. The second group remained calm. The experiment consisted of having each group “read either compelling or weak arguments designed to convince them that college students have good financial habits.” (Id.). The study was repeated with a second group of students; this time, providing the students with the identities of those making the arguments.

 As a consequence of these two experiments:
  “. . . the researchers found that the angry subjects were better at discriminating between strong and weak arguments and were more convinced by the stronger arguments. Those who were not made to feel angry tended to be equally convinced by both arguments, indicating that they were not as analytical in their assessments.” (Id.)
 Thus, it seems that anger, by motivating people to take action, helps them take the right action. Anger causes people to focus on the right cues, and to disregard those that are not relevant.
 So . . . perhaps getting angry during a mediation session is not such a bad thing after all, and, in fact, may lead to a more rational and analytical resolution.
 . . . Just something to think about. 
 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 6:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.