
People's sense of control over actions is reduced when angry or afraid: study - laurex
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/30/peoples-sense-of-control-over-their-actions-is-reduced-at-a-fundamental-level-when-theyre-angry-or-afraid/
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steve_adams_86
Anger is such an interesting experience in that (if this study is correct) we
tend to actually lose agency while angry, but internally I think we actually
believe we have dramatically increased agency in the moment. That's part of
what makes anger so dangerous. We're basically at maximum stupid while angry.
Do you ever get angry and suddenly feel a loss for words? Difficulty
articulating arguments? Resorting to less effective and more hurtful
strategies? Regretting it later? Anger, for the most part, is useless in most
modern human interactions. I think it's the sort of thing that's good at
convincing a brain that horrible acts are justifiable in the moment, such was
killing in war or serious altercations. Anger and fear both seem like tools
for survival in a world most of us no longer live in.

As for the ethical aspect... I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life,
although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a
lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to
get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and
fight these bullies. The best advice anyone ever gave me (Thanks Mr. McAneny)
was that we aren't a tool of our anger, but instead, it's a tool of our
creation. We're responsible for what we do with our anger, even if we're not
the instigators. Anger typically leads to brutal solutions, both emotionally
and physically, and it's so rare that this is necessary or remotely helpful.
That really stuck with me.

I grew up with so many people telling me to use my anger against the bullies,
and I think that reflects our cultural belief (or desire to believe) that our
anger is justified, and what we do when we're angry is as well. I believe the
truth is that it's almost never the correct response. The adults and peers
around me who told me to embrace my anger probably didn't have a good
understanding of why they believed that or perpetuated that belief.

All that is to say: We should stop believing in our anger so much, and start
being responsible for what we do when we're angry. That seems like the most
ethical solution.

~~~
marviel
Ive read some of the book "The Art of Empathy", in which the author describes
anger as "the prideful sentry." I like this way of thinking about it.

Clearly, any emotion when taken to the extreme is bad, and anger is perhaps
the most obvious example -- yet I would hesitate to call its existence
useless, even in a modern context. Anger & pride both have functions as "alarm
systems" for circumstances which would be detrimental to certain things we
value.

EDIT: I now realize that your original comment was not presenting such a
black-and-white view of the subject as I originally perceived. Keeping my
comment above in tact for historical purposes

~~~
steve_adams_86
I agree. No emotion or sensation is 'useless', because they all serve to tell
us about what's going on inside and around us. I suppose that's the key here.
We can listen to anger and fear all day, but we don't have to connect that
high-charge wire to whatever machine it's telling us to. It's really important
to observe the feelings and not let it get out of control. It's also critical
to understand why the feeling came, how it developed, and what it means about
ourselves. I think those two parts are often ignored.

The same can even be said for attraction which can lead to crazy infatuation,
or the desire to relax which can lead to chronically getting nothing done.
Mostly these are very positive thoughts and feelings in moderation, so it's
also difficult to observe and reconsider in the moment. Fear and anger are
very important as well, but the product of both can be devastating when
unregulated.

This is hard to teach to kids. I have kids, and one of them actually gets
angry far too easily - maybe even more than I did as a kid. Trying to explain
the idea of being responsible for what his anger leads to feels like a
Sisyphean task at times. It's so important to me though to have them
understand that ultimately, they decide how they react to what happens to them
or around them. And of course the same applies to all those other feelings.
People are complicated.

~~~
deesep
> It's really important to observe the feelings and not let it get out of
> control. It's also critical to understand why the feeling came, how it
> developed, and what it means about ourselves.

You just described Emotional intelligence, which I gained by practising Yoga,
meditation and stoicism. I used to be neurotic and my anxieties ruled me. I
didn't get angry often but when I did it was explosive. People were often
surprised cause they never thought I could be like that. Three years ago,
burnt out, feeling empty and seeking purpose, I quit working and began
searching. Trust me when I say that I had no idea what I was searching for. I
just needed to search for 'meaning' and purpose. It led me to yoga and
meditation and my life began to change. I started to gain Emotional
intelligence and better control of my nerves. It was like I was born again. My
anger outbursts slowly disappead. I able to observe About a year after I began
yoga and meditation, I got a copy of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and I got
even better. After 3 years I went back to work.

I practice yoga and meditation with my kid. It was hard at first, but I tried
to make it fun for her. Now she enjoys it. I teach her about Emotional
intelligence and read the daily Stoic with her when I can. She loves Epictetus
:)

------
zrail
“People make bad choices if they’re mad or scared or stressed.”

—Disney’s FROZEN (2013)

~~~
OrgNet
I thought that it was a fact that has been known for much much longer then
that (like almost forever)....

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pmiller2
Posted title is clickbait. Actual title: "People's Sense of Control Over Their
Actions Is Reduced At A Fundamental Level When They're Angry Or Afraid."

What the article actually says is that when people are angry or afraid, they
don't believe as strongly that their actions are within their control. This
seems like one of those "well, duh" kind of studies, but it's pretty
interesting, because it lends credence to the "crime of passion" defense in
law.

~~~
karmakaze
> they don't believe

More specifically, they act in a manner of not believing rather than merely
stating as much.

------
PeterWhittaker
From the first paragraph: "...they often say that... they didn’t feel
responsible for those actions – they “lost control”.... In the UK, under
certain circumstances, a person accused of murder can even claim that this
“loss of control” led to them killing their victim. If successful, this
defence can reduce charges to manslaughter."

I am surprised at this line defense (not a lawyer, of course).

At the risk of creating a falsely binary division, either we are (at least
most of the time) responsible adults or we are not. If we are, then we are
responsible for our actions - even if our faculties are temporarily impaired,
at least by virtue of actions we took. For example, driving while under the
influence.

If we are not, then why do we have other privileges, such as voting, being
able to care for children, etc?

Of course, there are middle grounds of various kinds and the law must find and
work with these. Any sort of diminished capacity defence, e.g., by virtue of
illness (e.g., depression), by virtue of mental disability, etc.

It seems to me that these middle grounds arise because there are discernible
pathologies that give rise to diminished capacity. That seems reasonable.

Where the UK defence seems odd, seems to fly in the face of responsibility, is
that there is no pathology. Someone got angry and lost control.

But anger is a choice. With the possible exception of the immature, of the
previously mentioned disabled, and of cases involving actual physical contact
(where someone isn't respecting your boundaries and your expressed wish that
they back off), we choose anger as our response. It can be very hard to
control this choice, but we are choosing to allow anger to rise.

Once we make that choice, we are responsible for what comes next. IM(NS)HO.
YMMV. IANAL. Etc.

~~~
Sharlin
Isn't there a distinction between manslaughter and a premeditated murder in
most jurisdictions? Where I'm from, impulsively killing someone in a burst of
anger ("a crime of passion") is definitely different from a cold-blooded
murder in the eyes of the law.

~~~
samatman
In the US, premeditation is the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder.

Manslaughter is a lesser offense, for when there was no intent of homicide but
the perpetrator is nonetheless responsible: say someone decides to juggle axes
on a balcony and drops one on someone’s head.

~~~
Sharlin
Ah, right. Mixed up the terms.

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btrettel
I'm a cyclist. This study might explain the sheer number of drivers who tell
me that they passed me dangerously because I gave them "no choice".

When stopped at stoplights, I've told some of these drivers that they always
can choose to wait until a safe time to pass, but many drivers scoff at this
as if it's not a realistic option. Perhaps 95% of the time when I'm riding a
driver wouldn't have to wait more than 30 seconds. (Maybe longer for other
cyclists since I try to minimize this.) The fact that I so frequently catch up
with these drivers at stop lights should be a clue to them that I often do not
slow them down (i.e., stoplights are the bottleneck), but in my experience
mentioning that tends to make an already angry driver angrier.

So far I don't think I've made much progress convincing dangerous drivers to
drive better by talking to them, but I now have a much better understanding of
their concerns.

~~~
koonsolo
If you are from US, I'm guessing the real problem is that most of those
drivers never take the bicycle, and so have no clue of what it feels like.

I had the reverse. I drove my bike a lot when I was a teenager. Once I started
driving at 18, I realized I did a lot of dangerous things with my bike.

The best thing is such situation is let the other person experience what it's
like.

I'm guessing you also drive a car, so you know both situations. But from what
I can tell, US drivers have no real experience with riding bicycles in
traffic. And the times I was in US, I certainly don't want to ride a bike on
most of those roads.

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qwerty456127
Is it just sense of control or actual control reduced? E.g. I generally am
very mindful, calm and kind person but I can remember a couple of times in my
life when I was driven so mad (e.g. when guys were bullying me at school I
could go "berserk" and attack) or so scared (e.g. I once walked a bad city
district at night alone and 2 zombies approached, kind of junkies perhaps,
looked like real ghouls, so I ran away) that I was acting unconsciously and
impulsively. From the consciousness point of view it felt like it was turned
off and I wasn't in control any more, like in a non-lucid dream.

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fallingfrog
Now take 2 parts mass media profit seeking, incomplete information, and an
fear inducing event and stir them together. It’s no wonder we panic and go to
war so easily.

------
mirimir
From William S. Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_ :

> I am never here …. Never that is fully in possession, but somehow in a
> position to forestall ill-advised moves…. Patrolling is, in fact, my
> principal occupation….. No matter how tight Security, I am always somewhere
> Outside giving orders and Inside this strait jacket of jelly that gives and
> stretches but always reforms ahead of every movement, thought, impulse,
> stamped with the seal of alien inspection….

[http://www.madnessandliterature.org/literature.php?id=26&res...](http://www.madnessandliterature.org/literature.php?id=26&resultpage=1)

The "alien inspection" reference is about Scientology, I think.

~~~
isoskeles
I wonder what reduced William S. Burroughs' sense of control over his actions
that one time when he accidentally murdered his wife.

~~~
mirimir
Alcohol, probably. Maybe also/or heroin. And he'd just returned from South
America, where he'd been chasing (unsuccessfully, I've read) some young guy.
And where he did, I gather, ayahuasca, maybe a few times. So he was probably
crazier than usual.

But anyway, it was indeed horrible that he shot his wife. But for whatever
it's worth, it was a formative event in his career as a writer. As I recall,
he credited it as _the_ formative event in his career.

And to your point, it was arguably one of the things that he had in mind when
writing that.

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maxxxxx
In Buddhism anger is one of the five poisons. It clouds your ability to see
the world as it is so you actions probably won't be wise.

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rosser
When you're stuck in your amygdala, you kinda necessarily can't be operating
from your cortices.

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WheelsAtLarge
I've always thought that anger was a direct result of being afraid. When we
are afraid we have a number of feelings that are put forth as a result.
Depending on why we are afraid we then use anger as a tool to get past the
situation.

Also once we feel threaten and afraid we immediately fall into protection mode
where our innate behavior is exhibited. You can think of our 4-5-year-old self
as a sample. Things like selfishness, anger and doing what we can to get the
upper hand, starts to be seen in us.

If you think about it, it takes a lot of years of teaching by society and
parents to keeps us from being selfish, angry and whatever basic instincts we
have. But even with that, we all fall into those modes when threaten and we
are afraid.

~~~
samllhands
russia is indeed a scarey place to live

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jacquesm
Advertisers have exploited this particular bit of knowledge since the 30's of
the previous century.

------
mapcars
If you pay attention to how you perform - it's obvious, you don't need the
studies, lol. We perform at our best in most pleasant states of your mind.

------
waterhouse
Since neither the article nor the comments have mentioned game theory, I will
mention it.

A game-theoretic _threat_ is a statement that, if you do something that hurts
me (and might benefit you), then I will do a thing that hurts both of us. It's
clear why "hurting you" is a critical part of the threatened action; the
reason "hurting me" is included is that if it benefited me, then we'd assume I
would do it anyway. The puzzle of the threat is then, how can I convince you
I'll do something that will hurt me? Well, if I could modify my brain such
that I will be determined to do something violent to you even at great risk to
myself, that would be a great solution. _Anger_ is an emotion that does
exactly this. Even better, if it is generally understood that any violations
of my body (or whatever I want to protect) will trigger an anger response in
me, then I don't have to make specific statements towards people I come
across.

One can imagine variations on this: (a) if you know someone else has an anger
response, and you want to do something that you're worried might trigger it,
then maybe you can do a light-touched version of it and see if you can detect
the beginnings of their anger response; (b) if you get into fights too often,
you might give a "warning" (growl) response first.

It's interesting to think how these things might have evolved, because there
are two sides to them. Anger is useless—counterproductive, in fact—if no one
else understands before they act that you might become angry. And if anger
doesn't exist, then detecting anger wouldn't be a useful trait. What came
first, then? I would guess that some animals evolved a fight-or-flight
response to deal with predators (because that increases survival chances), and
the triggering mechanism was probably clumsy enough that it happened in non-
life-threatening scenarios and caused needless violence (with negative
expected value to all parties), and _that_ led to animals either being able to
see the early stages of fight-or-flight, or having a sense of what will
trigger fight-or-flight and avoiding doing those things (unless they plan to
win the fight). (The fight-or-flight response is probably reasonably obvious
to observe—muscles tensing, freezing or making sudden movements, etc.—so at
least predators should have gotten good at noticing it, to become more
efficient.)

I don't know what research has been done on the evolutionary origins of anger.
But it makes so much game-theoretic _sense_ —and I have the impression that
mammals in general have an anger response; quick googling gives mixed results
about reptiles—that I'm very confident that what we would call anger evolved
because it was useful for backing up an implicit threat of "don't violate my
body or other things important to me, or else I will become violent". Yet I
didn't see any discussion of evolution or game theory in either the article or
the study. Those would seem to be important for forming hypotheses and
interpreting results.

Anyway, for the threat to work, the "I will become violent" must be a strong
compulsion (taking away the choice to not carry out the threat) and/or value-
adjustment (so carrying out the threat now looks like the best thing to do).
Either might subjectively feel like a loss of control, or not. Given that
evolution has successfully implemented this feature, the subjective feeling
seems like an implementation detail to me—maybe useful in learning to manage
your own anger response.

------
bitcuration
It's about energy. Anger and fear boost energy temporarily, probably evolved
for survival. That's all there is to it, something to do with motivation. For
example, when in anger you won't procrastinate which otherwise would be almost
impossible to beat.

~~~
dredmorbius
More than that. Limiting sensory inputs -- eliminating distractions -- can
also be useful.

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bellerose
You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an
illusion. Thus, my emotional state tends to rarely get angry compared to when
I thought free will was a possibility. Since understanding there isn't any
control over anything makes me realize what can a person reasonably blame
others or themselves if nobody has any choice over how they came to be or act.
I don't necessarily gain control but I'm more functioning in society than
before. That's typically the goal for everyone because than we have a better
living experience.

~~~
abtinf
Why even bother trying to explain something to others if free will is an
illusion? What are you relying on to persuade them if they don't have a mind
capable of understanding you?

~~~
colanderman
It's not like they had a choice…

~~~
Quekid5
Indeed. Even if you don't believe in it at a philosophical level, you don't
exactly have any choice in the matter. We all _behave_ as if we have free will
-- the only alternative would be to just stop doing anything (e.g. being
catatonic).

