When I look at the kinds of articles people post on social media and the comments under them, it feels like there’s an overwhelming amount of hate and anger in the world - or at least among the people posting and commenting. (Maybe it’s just that non-angry people don’t spend much time in this kind of spaces.)
In contrast, when I think about my own life, I realize that I’m almost never angry. I feel many other negative emotions, sure, but anger isn’t one of them, and even when it arises it’s usually quite short-lived. I can’t even name a single person I hate - neither in my personal life nor in the media. I simply don’t spend time dwelling on people I’m not interested in or being angry at the world for not meeting my expectations.
This makes me wonder: is my experience rare or unusual? Or is hate and anger simply overrepresented in the media because those emotions motivate people to engage, making them seem far more widespread than they actually are?
I’m trying to understand rather than criticize. I can’t take credit for not being angry because whatever tha skill is doesn’t translate into other things like anxiety. I’m anxious about equally trivial things and I can’t help myself. I guess I’m just glad I don’t need to deal with this constant anger too.
Isn’t anger a masking emotion or something like that (can’t remember the term). So it’s not like a primordial emotion since it’s always rooted in another emotion.
I don’t know about that but when im angry it does not feel like any other emotion is underlying it. I have been angry along with other emotions that lead to complex things. being angry about someone doing something you thought they were better than that you care about leading to a sorta disapointing sadness or such.
Ah I remember, anger is considered a secondary emotion. So it does usually stems from underlying feelings like frustration, fear, hurt, or even sadness. It’s like a defense mechanism.
Here’s an article on it.
I’m afraid the article you linked also says anger can be a primary emotion or a secondary emotion.
Tbh I’m not a big fan of the article. It does not match up very well with my understanding of the emotions.
For example, Anger is a problem-solving emotion. Fear is the defensive emotion. Yet the article seems to mix up the two.
For sure, feel free to find other articles from a scientific journal to find something with less discrepancy. I just picked something that seemed to be accessible. And unfortunately I don’t remember much on the topic to be of use.
Alright. Hopefully your memory comes back eventually. The idea of anger not being a primary emotion is an interesting thought I hadn’t considered before.
Totally, kind of why the idea has lingered in my brain all these years. If I do any further reading I’ll check back in. Since there were others also curious on the topic.
I feel like anger is a more raw emotion than frustration. just feels wierd to me. anger feels like the opposite of lust or something.
Definitely feel free to read up on it and see if any of the science of the model resonates better than my explanation. I barely remember the topic 😅
fair enough. thanks for the convo.
I have plans on doing further reading on the topic, so I’ll follow back if I find anything interesting on the topic!
I’m not certain I buy that in every single case, but do buy into it for many, many cases.
It’s actually something I tried to pass on to other folks when I worked a phone customer service job - there’s cases where it’s obvious the anger is coming from somewhere else if you’re paying attention (example I had and shared was clearly fear), so told people to pay attention to exactly what folks are saying to try and elicit that, and speak/address the actual problem/emotion.
Fuck I miss that job some days…feels like the only thing I’ve done that I was really, really good at. Was also a small team with very little corpo oversight at the time, so don’t know if these approaches would fly as well today v. scripted responses.