Study: Anger Fuels Better Decisions

The phrase "anger blinds you" may have new meaning as a recent study has revealed that anger actually might help with indecision, according to LiveScience.

The reputation of anger has long been associated with hasty behavior, but anger actually assists people in making better choices, including those that are poor at thinking rationally. The reasoning behind this is that angry people base their decisions on signs that are significant, rather than distractions.

Previous studies of emotional anger have shown that it tends to bias people's thinking, and provokes them into taking bigger risks. Still, throughout all these studies, little has been focused on how anger affects a person's thinking.

To study this effect, Wesley Moons, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his colleague Diana Mackie designed three experiments to determine how anger influences a person's thinking. The purpose of the experiment was to find out whether or not anger makes people draw more decisive decisions, or more hazardous decisions.

In the initial experiment, Moons, Mackie, and their team of researchers asked a group of college students to write about a past experience that had made them very angry, or have their dreams criticized by others. In a second group of students, anger was not provoked unlike the first group of students. To provide accurate data, the researchers made sure that the first group was as angry as they were supposed to be.

The researchers then asked the two groups to read either strong or weak arguments that were designed to convince the readers that college students have good financial habits. Afterwards, the college students were asked to evaluate the strength of the arguments based upon how convincing they were, as well as how logical.

The second experiment was repeated to a different group of students, with the exception that they were given who had made the arguments. Various students received who made the arguments, which ranged from an organization that had experience in dealing with financial matters, to a medical organization whose expertise was irrelevant to the financial topic.

Surprisingly, the studies showed that angry subjects were better at telling the difference between the strengths of the arguments, and were more swayed by the stronger arguments. The group that was not riled up was equally convinced by both arguments, which meant that they had not been as analytically focused in the evaluation of the arguments. Even more, the angry group of students were better at judging the arguments based upon which organization had made them.

The third part of the anger experiment included an argument that supported a requirement for graduating seniors to take comprehensive exams. Although the experiment was repeated, this time the subjects tested were on those who were more likely to make irrational decisions. This crucial element provided that Moons, Mackie, and their team would be able to see whether anger also makes typically non-analytical thinkers to think more analytically.

Again, the researchers found out that anger did in indeed provide the subjects a degree of discrimination between the strong and weak arguments than those who were not angry. Drawing from these three experiments, Moon and Mackie conclude that anger can even alter non-analytical thinkers into more careful thinkers.

Their findings that are to be published in this month's issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, proposes that anger helps people focus their mental energy into distinguishing between ideas and situations, and assists people in blocking out irrelevant cues that are related to decision-making.

This could possibly be because anger is designed to stimulate people into taking action and perhaps making the right decisions.

Melinda Wenner. "Anger Fuels Better Decisions." Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/health/070611_anger_rational.html