Is This The Best Way To Control Anger?

✅ Today's Friday • 📖 8 mins read

Do you have anger issues? And you think punching a pillow cools your anger down. Actually, it doesn’t. Instead, science says there’s a more creative way to control anger.

Anger is an issue we all wish we could learn to deal with. The destructive reactions we come up with when angry, we often come to regret later.

Stoic master Seneca held that we must control anger when it’s early. He wrote, “The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is hard to get back again into a healthy condition.”

Sometimes you realize you did wrong in the heat of the moment, which makes you go angry at yourself all over again. That’s memory of anger making you angry.

So, if you’re already angry, is there an easy way to control it?

Do You Punch A Pillow To Control Anger?

Did anyone ever suggest that you pedal the hell out of your exercise bike to let yourself cool off? Or scream like a primate to release your hidden anger? Or box the stuffing out of a punching bag to loosen up?

Popular wisdom says punching a bag, a wall, or a pillow cools down your anger. But scientists inform us that the crowd-pleasing media have it wrong. Venting off your anger (catharsis) does not make you calmer.

As psychologists point out, ventilating your anger is of no value. In fact, it can have just the opposite effect, making you angrier.

Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and social psychology, has extensively researched hostile behavior for three decades. His articles have been cited over 25,000 times.

In a 1999 study, Brad Bushman, along with Angela Stack and Roy Baumeister, found that people who followed the catharsis message and then hit the punching bag became more aggressive afterward.

And in 2002, another study (Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame?) by Brad Bushman found that when angry people hit a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them, they got angrier.

Carol Tavris, social psychologist, says, “People who are most prone to give vent to their rage get angrier, not less angry.”

Tavris cites a study in her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion among San Diego engineers who were laid off. It showed that the men who vented their anger actually became more hostile towards the company or their supervisors.

So, what’s a great creative way to control your anger? Let’s dive into the scientific study behind it.

The Best Way To Control Anger: A Physical Activity You Enjoy

Research found that sport and exercise can reduce hostile behavior when participants find their movements satisfying and enjoyable. In short: To reduce your anger, engage in a physical activity that you love.

The Study

In 2016, Fabian Pels and Jens Kleinert of German Sport University, Cologne, gathered 33 men and 27 women from local universities. Of these, 58 students played a sport regularly, such as jogging, basketball, and gymnastics.

The psychologists said they were to take part in a study “to examine whether self-perception differs between physical activities primarily requiring fine motor skills and those primarily requiring endurance.”

That’s expert-speak for: We want to find out how you guys see the difference between exercises that need fine skills and those that demand stamina.

But actually, it was a hostile behavior study. (Talk of the creative lies psychologists make up.)

The Process

Thirty out of the chosen sixty were to row on an ergometer, a rowing machine. The researchers divided them into three groups.

1. The first group was to row it out on their own (individual rowers).
2. The second group was to perform it with others as a team (cooperative rowers).
3. The third group was to do it with others as contestants (competitive rowers).

The other thirty were asked to do combat exercises. They also got clubbed into three groups:

1. The individual combat exercisers punched a boxing bag.
2. In the cooperative combat condition, they had to hit a corded ball in a way that it passed to the other person over a rail. The other person would then pass the ball back.
3. The competitive combat players got this instruction: Strike your opponent with a bataka bat (a padded foam bat), and your opponent could hit you back with theirs.

The Tests

Before starting, each participant was tested on their hostile behavior score. Then their ‘umpires’ asked them to play some table tennis. While they were at it, the umpires gave them a load of negative and unfair criticism to increase their anger levels.

Afterwards, the researchers checked their anger levels again. Finally, they were sent to rowing or combat exercises. And, of course, they went through the test again.

But wait, this wasn’t over. The researchers repeated the whole cycle thrice. (Talk of psychological studies!)

The Result

The researchers at the beginning had assumed that their study would show that people who work out together would get less angry, and those who practiced aggressive moves would be angrier.

But they were wrong.

When the results came after analyzing all that data, it was a surprise. It was not that the persons who worked together as a team became calmer. Nor was it that the ones who played combat sports became angrier.

It was this: The rowers who rowed alone had reduced their anger the most.

But that’s not where it ends. Read on.

Does The Best Fighter Ever Get Angry?

One thing was clear to the researchers. That rowing away on a machine on your own to bring the anger under control was not a foolproof strategy. The real find was something else.

The researchers noticed the combat groups could not be made as angry by harsh criticism as the rowing groups.

That is, the combat groups were more chilled out even after their umpires rubbed them the wrong way. Plus, these combat guys did not show more anger while doing their batting or boxing rounds.

(That part reminded me of the Lao Tzu quote: “The best fighter is never angry.”)

All exercisers had reduced their anger, which Pels and Kleinert thought was due to overall muscle relaxation. Even this wasn’t the real finding of the study.

So, what was the surprise find?

It was this, as the researchers wrote in their article in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills:

“Aggression reduction is less a matter of movement type or social constellation than a matter of need satisfaction and personal fulfillment. In other words, sport and exercise are able to reduce hostile behavior, particularly in cases where participants experience movements or tasks as satisfying and enjoyable.”

An easy, creative, and scientific way to control your anger is to engage yourself in some form of exercise, but only when you find the activity enjoyable.

In a simple sentence: Exercising can reduce your anger, but only when you find the activity enjoyable.

Final Words

An Anger Misquote: Buddha never said this: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

It is a popular misquote. There is no written record that Buddha said it in so many words.

Hunting for it, you’d find that Joan Borysenko had written something similar in her 1987 book, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, that somehow got changed into that misquote.

Borysenko’s original words were:

“The Buddha compared holding onto anger to grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You, of course, are the one who gets burned.”

Coming back, what Pels and Kleinert’s research indicates is that if you want to bring your anger down (and stop holding onto the hot coal), engage yourself in an exercise you enjoy doing.

That is the surprisingly easy, practical, scientific way to control your anger.

Postscript: Happy to share that we reached out to the study author Dr. Fabian Pels and he endorsed this post on behalf of his research team. He emailed us back, writing:

“We were pleased to read your blog post. From our point of view, we can clearly state that you send the right message.”

Thank you, Dr. Fabian Pels.

√ Also Read: 5 Ways Empathy Can Be Dangerous

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