Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on the benefits of anger for attaining goals

This week, we are talking anger! 

We are often told that positive emotions like happiness are ideal for our mental health and well-being. 

However, new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that if you want to achieve your toughest goals, you need to get angry! 

The researchers conducted a series of 6 different experiments with over 1000 volunteers. In the experiments the scientists elicited an emotional response in the volunteer which included happy, bored, neutral or angry. 

The volunteers were then presented with different tasks that they had to complete - some were easy and some consisted of challenging goals. The tasks included solving a series of word puzzles and achieving a high score on a skiing video game. 

They found that in every experiment, the volunteer performed better at the challenge when they were angry.  In some cases this was shown through the volunteer achieving a high score or solving a problem faster - however in other cases, the feeling of anger in the volunteer resulted in them increasing the amount of cheating that occurred which led them to achieve a better outcome. They also found that when people were angry while tackling a challenging task, they persisted more which made them more likely to succeed. 

The study suggests that to promote well-being we should embrace a mix of both positive and negative emotions and understand that emotions that are considered negative such as anger, boredom or sadness can actually be useful in achieving personal goals. 

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