Angry People Make More Rational Decisions and Take the "Right" Action?

Need to make a decision? Get angry - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

This is an article that really needs to be commented upon, since it appears to upset evertyhing we've thought about angry.

In our long and tortured collectived and individual attempts to deal with this strong emotion, here comes the latest. As summed up by the msnbc article, "The next time you are plagued with indecision and need a clear way out, it might help to get angry."

The researchers claim anger helps people make better choices (notice this is mental, not an action). They claim it actually aids thinking rationally because it makes us tend to concentrate on the decision-cues "that really matter."

Study is by Wesley Moons, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his colleague Diane Mackie.

The upshot is that they think anger makes people think more rationally - both in being able to focus on the "strong" argument (by their definition, the one with valid scientific information), in being more logical in their thinking, and in being better able to 'consier the source.' They think it makes people more decisive. When not angry, people tend to be more wishy-washy. Well, that makes sense.

Why did this bring to my mind the phrase, "cold logic."

Points to ponder:
1. This was induced anger in a laboratory setting.
2. The decision they were asked to make was something like "do college students have good financial habits."
3. Their reporting of the non-logical candidates - well, perhaps LESS logical. Consider that the sample was all U. C. Santa Barbara college students.
4. They were TOLD to "logically evaluate" the material. How often, when you are enraged, are you sitting in a room with an authority figure and pencil and paper, and TOLD to "logically evaluate" the material? More likely you're being attacked by a person who keeps countering that you don't make sense, aren't thinking clearly, and could see it their way if you weren't such an idiot. Or you're facing a mindless entity like whoever is causing the traffic jam, or the bureaucracy that invented taxes, or the evil design that gave you small boobs or pimples. Or worse yet, something that triggers another survival instinct - let's say you find your spouse cheating.

The article ends with this summary: "This could be because anger is designed to motivate people to take action — and that it actually helps people to take the right action, the authors wrote."

That's a very strong statement -- the right action.

Why can't I get it out of my mind, the angry husband who has just found his wife in bed with another man and shoots them both? Which in some states is still manslaughter - "by reason of insanity" - or stronger yet, the cold anger, the cold analytical anger that motivates the person to premeditate a murder? I which case our lega system does not consider it manslaughter.

Real food for thought here. Perhaps one thing to consider is that bell curve again. In the middle, anger does motivate to right action. When you finally get tired of being abused by a spouse or boss and take a "right" action, such as trying to change it, or leaving. But at the extreme or rage ... do we really rational decisions and make the "right" action most of the time? Most of our regrets in life are from lashing out in anger aren't they? The decision may be correct that your husband is cheating - you have analyzed the evidence, and founds the facts. And after that, what is the "right" action? Can it be that simple?

Interesting piece of research here. Let me know your thoughts - mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc .

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Robert Solomon - True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions are Really Telling Us

IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT SOLOMON
Solomon was the author of more than 40 books, a gifted teacher and an expert in existentialism and emotions. He was born in 1942. He was Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT Austin. He had a bachelor's degree in molecular biology and a master's and doctoral degree in philosophy and psychology.
"Six billion people in the world and counting ... nevertheless what you do counts."

Clip of Solomon in the animated film, "Waking Life" talking about existentialism. "Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82EV4KBIsNk



Among Solomon's books: From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds (1972) arguably the best introductory text on existentialism in English, and The Passions (1976), considered a classic on the emotions.

From an ode to him on the Oxford University press blog. For the full article go HERE.

From the preface to Solomon’s most recent book, True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us:

I have always been fascinated by emotions; watching and dealing with them in other people, coping with and often joy-riding with my own. To be perfectly honest, I've also been terrified of them. As a child, I had a vile (though rarely violent) temper. As a young man, I fell in love often, and hard. As I matured, I learned to actually love, though perhaps more slowly and awkwardly than I would like to admit. And all along, I found myself brooding on, speculating about, luxuriating in, and terrified by my own emotional dispositions, responses, and preferences. I was already (although I did not know it at the time) a philosopher.

When I actually came into philosophy (from biology and medical school, where I had developed an interest in psychoanalysis), I brought with me that very personal fascination with the nature of the emotions ...

What were my emotions, my passions, or-more vaguely-my "feelings"? Did they, as it sometimes seemed, just happen to me-"sweep me away"-or even possess me, "take over my personality"? Or were they, as they also seemed to be, what was most me, most mine, what best (or worst) defined me? Were my emotions good and good for me, or were they bad and bad for me (as my less emotional friends would continually caution me)? What did it mean-that sixties' expression-to be "in touch with one's feelings"? What was it to be an "authentic" person? ...

Over the next thirty years, I explored those questions by way of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and biology... I had long been indignant that emotions were so neglected in philosophy, the self-appointed discipline of "rationality." ...

...Now the philosophy of emotions, and the idea that reason and emotions are in cahoots rather than antagonists, is a major research area in psychology and the fast-advancing neurosciences.

Check out the other clips from "Waking Life: on youtube.com. Interesting.

R.I.P.