People's sense of control over actions is reduced when angry or afraid: study

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.

“People make bad choices if they’re mad or scared or stressed.”

—Disney’s FROZEN (2013)

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.

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.

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.

From William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch:

> 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….

http://www.madnessandliterature.org/literature.php?id=26&res...

The "alien inspection" reference is about Scientology, I think.

In Buddhism anger is one of the five poisons. It clouds your ability to see the world as it is so you actions probably won't be wise.

When you're stuck in your amygdala, you kinda necessarily can't be operating from your cortices.

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.

Advertisers have exploited this particular bit of knowledge since the 30's of the previous century.

If you pay attention to how you perform - it's obvious, you don't need the studies, lol. We perform at our best in most pleasant states of your mind.

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.