

Anger is More Influential Than Joy: Sentiment Correlation in Weibo [pdf] - tareqak
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.2402v1.pdf

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ChuckMcM
A number of public speaking coaches will tell you to be 'angry' as a slightly
off vector emotion to passion. If you can be passionately angry about
something other people will be more influenced by it than if you are passively
happy about it.

Not that this is news to anyone who has been in a group situation where the
calm rational person with the good idea was over ruled by the angry person,
resulting in the group doing what the angry person suggested instead.

I had lunch at a conference with a woman who identified herself as a cultural
anthropologist who identified this observation as part of the fight/flight
nexus of responses. People she said prefer active directed action to random
undirected action, and anger is nearly always directed.

And in my own experience people seem to pay attention to angry speakers more
(perhaps out of a fear to see if they are going to get targeted by that anger?
I don't know).

As Howard Beale would say, "I'm mad as hell and not going to take this
anymore!" :-)

------
fatihpense
Maybe this is because of anger is more related to political issues and joy is
more related to personal issues.

~~~
loceng
And if so, is that a sign of how unbalanced or unfair our current structures
are?

