New Research Suggests That Getting Angry May Be A Powerful Motivator For Helping You Achieve Difficult Goals
Recent research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that while anger is commonly seen as a negative feeling, it can actually serve as a strong driving force that motivates individuals to accomplish difficult goals and objectives in their lives.
According to Heather Lench, the study’s lead author, people tend to think that remaining in a “state of happiness” is optimal. In fact, many individuals view achieving happiness as a large goal in and of itself.
“The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and well-being has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion, but previous research suggests that a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes,” Lench said.
For decades, the functionalist theory of emotion has been a popular topic of study, and it proposes that every emotion, whether positive or negative, is a response to environmental events. These emotions aim to signal significant scenarios that demand action.
And different emotions prompt varied reactions. For instance, experiencing sadness might signal the need to seek emotional support, whereas getting angry might indicate that action is needed to beat a challenge.
So, the research team conducted a set of experiments with over 1,000 participants and examined survey data from an additional 1,400 individuals to delve into exactly how anger can influence goal achievement.
In each experiment, they induced various emotional states in participants– ranging from amusement and anger to sadness and desire– or simply a neutral state before introducing them to a difficult goal.
In one of the experiments, participants viewed images intended to provoke certain emotions or a neutral reaction, followed by tasks involving word puzzles.
In a different experiment, the objective was to achieve high scores in a skiing video game. This included one challenging version where players had to dodge flags on a slalom course and a simpler version focused solely on making a jump.
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In all of the experiments conducted, anger actually enhanced the participants’ capacity to achieve their goals in various difficult scenarios, compared to when they were in a neutral emotional state.
This improvement was evident in several instances through higher scores or faster response times. Notably, in one experiment, anger was also linked to an increased tendency to cheat in order to obtain a more favorable result.
Furthermore, the researchers examined survey data gathered around the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
Prior to the elections, respondents rated their potential anger level if their preferred candidate lost. Post-election, they disclosed their voting participation and choice.
The data showed that those who anticipated feeling angry about their candidate’s loss were more inclined to vote. However, this anger did not influence their choice of candidate.
“These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,” Lench explained.
Lench also claimed that anger’s role in motivating individuals to strive for and often attain their goals was particularly noticeable in scenarios with more challenging objectives. However, when the goals were less demanding, like in the ski jump video game, anger did not seem to have a significant impact on achievement.
Additionally, while anger was linked to enhanced success in various instances, other emotions like desire or amusement were also sometimes connected with better goal achievement.
These findings suggest that emotions typically viewed as negative, like sadness, boredom, and anger, may actually be beneficial.
“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable and maladaptive. Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes well-being and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations,” Lench concluded.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, visit the link here.
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