Southwestern College Effective Means to Reduce Aggression Analysis Paper Read the article linked and write a two-three page response paper addressing the f

Southwestern College Effective Means to Reduce Aggression Analysis Paper Read the article linked and write a two-three page response paper addressing the following:Describe the concept of catharsis in your own words.What did the article find was an effective means to reduce aggression? Were the results consistent with catharsis theory? Explain why or why not.Finally, pretend you are an anger management counselor – given the evidence presented in the article and in the text, briefly describe at least TWO exercises you could use in an anger management class to help your clients become less aggressive. Make sure to explain why your exercises would be expected to work. PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
Bushman / VENTING ANGER FEEDS THE FLAME
Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame?
Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction,
Anger, and Aggressive Responding
Brad J. Bushman
Iowa State University
Does distraction or rumination work better to diffuse anger?
Catharsis theory predicts that rumination works best, but empirical evidence is lacking. In this study, angered participants hit a
punching bag and thought about the person who had angered
them (rumination group) or thought about becoming physically
fit (distraction group). After hitting the punching bag, they
reported how angry they felt. Next, they were given the chance to
administer loud blasts of noise to the person who had angered
them. There also was a no punching bag control group. People in
the rumination group felt angrier than did people in the distraction or control groups. People in the rumination group were also
most aggressive, followed respectively by people in the distraction
and control groups. Rumination increased rather than
decreased anger and aggression. Doing nothing at all was more
effective than venting anger. These results directly contradict
catharsis theory.
coming from.” . . . Your boxing trainer knows it’s in there.
And he wants you to give it to him. (“Fighting Fit,” 1993,
p. 179)
In a New York Times Magazine article about hate crimes,
Andrew Sullivan writes, “Some expression of prejudice
serves a useful purpose. It lets off steam; it allows natural
tensions to express themselves incrementally; it can
siphon off conflict through words, rather than actions”
(Sullivan, 1999, p. 113). A large billboard in Missouri
states, “Hit a Pillow, Hit a Wall, But Don’t Hit Your Kids!”
Catharsis Theory
The theory of catharsis is one popular and authoritative statement that venting one’s anger will produce a
positive improvement in one’s psychological state. The
word catharsis comes from the Greek word katharsis,
which literally translated means a cleansing or purging.
According to catharsis theory, acting aggressively or even
viewing aggression is an effective way to purge angry and
aggressive feelings.
Sigmund Freud believed that repressed negative emotions could build up inside an individual and cause psychological symptoms, such as hysteria (nervous outbursts). Breuer and Freud (1893-1895/1955) proposed
that the treatment of hysteria required the discharge of
the emotional state previously associated with trauma.
They claimed that for interpersonal traumas, such as
The belief in the value of venting anger has become
widespread in our culture. In movies, magazine articles,
and even on billboards, people are encouraged to vent
their anger and “blow off steam.” For example, in the
movie Analyze This, a psychiatrist (played by Billy Crystal)
tells his New York gangster client (played by Robert De
Niro), “You know what I do when I’m angry? I hit a pillow. Try that.” The client promptly pulls out his gun,
points it at the couch, and fires several bullets into the
pillow. “Feel better?” asks the psychiatrist. “Yeah, I do,”
says the gunman. In a Vogue magazine article, female
model Shalom concludes that boxing helps her release
pent-up anger. She said,
Author’s Note: I would like to thank Remy Reinier for her help scanning photo IDs of students and photographs from health magazines. I
also would like to thank Angelica Bonacci for her helpful comments on
an early draft of this article. Correspondence concerning this article
should be addressed to Brad J. Bushman, Department of Psychology,
Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3180; e-mail: bushman@
iastate.edu.
I found myself looking forward to the chance to pound
out the frustrations of the week against Carlos’s (her
trainer) mitts. Let’s face it: A personal boxing trainer has
advantages over a husband or lover. He won’t look at you
accusingly and say, “I don’t know where this irritation is
PSPB, Vol. 28 No. 6, June 2002 724-731
© 2002 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
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Bushman / VENTING ANGER FEEDS THE FLAME
insults and threats to the ego, emotional expression
could be obtained through direct aggression: “The reaction of an injured person to a trauma has really only . . . a
‘cathartic’ effect if it is expressed in an adequate reaction
like revenge” (p. PAGE?). Breuer and Freud believed
that expressing anger was much better than bottling it
up inside.
Freud’s therapeutic ideas on emotional catharsis
form the basis of the hydraulic model of anger. The
hydraulic model suggests that frustrations lead to anger
and that anger, in turn, builds up inside an individual,
similar to hydraulic pressure inside a closed environment, until it is released in some way. If people do not let
their anger out but try to keep it bottled up inside, it will
eventually cause them to explode in an aggressive rage.
The modern theories of catharsis are based on this
model. Catharsis is seen as a way of relieving the pressure
that the anger creates inside the psyche. The core idea is
that it is better to let the anger out here and there in little
bits as opposed to keeping it inside as it builds up to the
point at which a more dangerous explosion results.
If venting really does get anger “out of your system,”
then venting should decrease aggression because people
are less angry. Almost as soon as psychology researchers
began conducting scientific tests of catharsis theory, the
theory ran into trouble. In one of the first experiments
on the topic (Hornberger, 1959), participants first
received an insulting remark from a confederate. Next,
half of the participants pounded nails for 10 minutes—
an activity that resembles many of the “venting” techniques that people who believe in catharsis continue to
recommend even today. The other half did not get a
chance to vent their anger by pounding nails. After this,
all participants had a chance to criticize the person who
had insulted them. If catharsis theory is true, the act of
pounding nails should reduce subsequent aggression.
The results showed the opposite effect. The people who
had hammered the nails were more (rather than less)
hostile toward the confederate afterward than were the
ones who did not get to pound any nails.
In 1973, Albert Bandura issued a statement calling for
a moratorium on catharsis theory and the use of venting
in therapy. Four years later, Geen and Quanty (1977)
published their influential review of catharsis theory in
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. After reviewing
the relevant data, they concluded that venting anger
does not reduce aggression. If anything, they concluded,
it makes people more aggressive afterward. More recent
research has come to similar conclusions (e.g.,
Bushman, Baumeister, & Stack, 1999). Geen and Quanty
also concluded that venting anger can reduce physiological arousal but people must express their anger directly
against the provocateur. People also must believe that
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the provocateur will not retaliate. Venting against substitute targets does not reduce arousal.
Cognitive Neoassociation Theory
According to cognitive neoassociation theory
(Berkowitz, 1993), aversive events (e.g., frustrations,
provocations, hot temperatures) produce negative
affect. Negative affect, in turn, automatically stimulates
thoughts, memories, expressive motor reactions, and
physiological responses associated with both fight and
flight tendencies. The fight associations give rise to rudimentary feelings of anger, whereas the flight associations
give rise to rudimentary feelings of fear.
Cognitive neoassociation theory posits that aggressive
thoughts are linked together in memory, thereby forming an associative network. Once an aggressive thought is
processed or stimulated, activation spreads out along the
network links and primes or activates associated
thoughts as well. Not only are associated aggressive
thoughts linked together in memory but thoughts are
also linked along the same sort of associative lines to
emotional reactions and action tendencies (Bower,
1981; Lang, 1979). Thus, the activation of aggressive
thoughts can engender a complex of associations consisting of aggressive ideas, emotions related to violence,
and the impetus for aggressive actions.
Cognitive neoassociation theory predicts that venting
should increase rather than decrease angry feelings and
aggressive behaviors. Venting involves behaving aggressively, often against “safe” inanimate objects. To vent,
people punch pillows, wallop punching bags, beat on
couches with foam baseball bats, throw dishes on the
ground, kick trash cans, scream and swear into pillows,
and so forth. In essence, venting is practicing how to
behave aggressively. Such aggressive activity should
prime aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavioral tendencies, especially if the people think about the source
of their anger while venting. Thus, venting should keep
angry feelings active in memory and also should increase
the likelihood of subsequent aggressive responses.
Rumination and Distraction
Most pop psychology and self-help books implicitly
assume that people are ruminating about their provocateur while venting anger. Some authors, however, are
more explicit. For example, John Lee (1993) gives the
following advice to angry people in his popular book Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately:
Punch a pillow or a punching bag. Punch with all the
frenzy you can. If you are angry at a particular person,
imagine his or her face on the pillow or punching bag,
and vent your rage physically and verbally. You will be
doing violence to a pillow or punching bag so that you
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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN
can stop doing violence to yourself by holding in poisonous anger. (p. 96)
Some devices for venting anger make it easy for people
to ruminate about their provocateur. For example, consider the following advertisement from a toy catalog:
WHEN YOU NEED SOMETHING THAT WON’T HIT
BACK. Wham-It stands 42” tall and takes abuse from kids
and adults alike. When you feel like you just have to
strike out, Wham-It is always on call. New clear vinyl
pocket lets you insert a photo or drawing.
Rumination is defined as “self-focused attention,” or
directing attention inward on the self, and particularly
on one’s negative mood (Lyubomirsky & NolenHoeksema, 1995). Any process that serves to exacerbate
a negative mood, such as rumination, should increase
anger and aggression. In contrast, any process that distracts attention away from an angry mood should reduce
anger and aggression. If provoked individuals are
induced to think about how they feel, they will maintain,
or exacerbate, their angry mood. If they are induced to
think about something else, however, the anger will dissipate in time.
Previous research has shown that rumination
increases angry feelings. In one study (Rusting & NolenHoeksema, 1998), college students were angered by
reading a story about a professor who treated a student
unfairly and were told to imagine themselves in a similar
situation. Some students ruminated by writing about
emotion-focused and self-focused topics (i.e., “Why do
you think the way you do”), whereas others were distracted by writing about nonemotional, irrelevant topics
(i.e., “the layout of the local post office”). Participants
who ruminated for 20 minutes reported being angrier
than did participants who were distracted. Another study
found that aggression toward an insulting confederate
was decreased by having people solve distracting math
problems (Konecni, 1974). Solving the math problems
presumably distracted people from the source of their
anger. Two other studies found that rumination
increased displaced aggression after a minor triggering
event (Bushman, Pedersen, Vasquez, Bonacci, & Miller,
2001). In Study 1, provoked participants focused attention on or away from their negative mood and later
engaged in displaced aggression against a competent or
fumbling confederate. Provoked participants who ruminated engaged in more displaced aggression against the
fumbling confederate than did participants who were
distracted. Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1
using different operational definitions and a substantially longer (8-hour) rumination period.
To date, no research has examined the effects of rumination and distraction in the effects of venting activities
on anger and subsequent aggression. According to cognitive neoassociation theory, ruminating while venting
should prime aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavioral tendencies.
Overview
In the present study, 600 college students (300 men,
300 women) were first angered by another participant
who criticized an essay they had written. In fact, there was
no other participant. Next, participants were randomly
assigned to rumination, distraction, or control groups.
Participants in the rumination group hit a punching bag
as long, as hard, and as many times as they wanted to.
While they hit the bag, they were told to think about the
other participant who had criticized their essay. For a
visual aid, they were shown a photo ID of a same-sex college student described as the “other participant” on a 15inch computer monitor. Participants in the distraction
group also hit a punching bag as long, as hard, and as
many times as they wanted to. While they hit the bag,
they were told to think about becoming physically fit. As
a visual aid, they were shown a photo ID of a same-sex
athlete from a health magazine on a 15-inch computer
monitor. Participants in the control group did not hit the
punching bag. Instead, they sat quietly for a couple minutes while the experimenter supposedly worked on the
other participant’s computer. No attempt was made to
reduce the anger of participants in the control group.
Anger was measured using a mood form. Aggression was
measured by allowing participants to blast their provocateur with loud and long noises through a pair of headphones on a competitive reaction time task. Catharsis
theory would predict the lowest levels of anger and
aggression among participants in the rumination condition. Cognitive neoassociation theory would predict the
exact opposite results.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 600 undergraduate college students
(300 men and 302 women) enrolled in introductory psychology courses.1 Students received extra course credit
in exchange for their voluntary participation. The data
from 2 women were discarded because they refused to
hit the punching bag. The final sample consisted of 300
men and 300 women. There were 100 men and 100
women in each of the three experimental conditions
(i.e., rumination, distraction, control).
Procedure
Participants were tested individually, but each was led
to believe that he or she would be interacting with
Bushman / VENTING ANGER FEEDS THE FLAME
another participant of the same sex. They were told that
the researchers were studying first impressions.
After giving informed consent, each participant wrote
a one-paragraph essay on abortion, either pro-choice or
pro-life (whichever the participant supported). After finishing, the participant’s essay was taken away to be shown
to the other participant (who was in fact nonexistent) for
evaluation. Meanwhile, the participant was permitted to
evaluate the partner’s essay, which expressed the opposite view on abortion (e.g., if the participant’s essay was
pro-choice, the partner’s essay was pro-life).
A short time later, the experimenter brought the participant’s own essay back with comments ostensibly
made by the other participant. All participants received
bad evaluations consisting of negative ratings on organization, originality, writing style, clarity of expression, persuasiveness of arguments, and overall quality. The ratings ranged from –10 to –8 on a 21-point scale ranging
from –10 (very bad) to +10 (very good). There was also a
handwritten comment stating “This is one of the worst
essays I have read!” Previous research has shown that this
procedure makes people quite angry (e.g., Bushman &
Baumeister, 1998; Bushman et al., 1999; Bushman,
Baumeister, & Phillips, 2001).
After reading the evaluation, the participant rated
how much they wanted to perform each of 10 activities
on a list. Included in this list of activities was “hitting a
punching bag.” Other activities included playing solitaire, reading a short story, watching a comedy, and playing a computer game. Ratings were made on a 10-point
scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 10 (extremely).
The punching bag manipulation came next. Two
thirds of participants received the punching bag procedure. If the participant did not rank the punching bag
activity first, the experiment asked if the participant
would be willing to hit the punching bag, explaining that
ratings were needed for each activity on the list and that
more ratings were needed for the punching bag activity.
By requesting the participant to agree, we were able to
ensure that the punching bag activity was the result of
choice by all participants, including those who had not
originally listed it as their top choice.
Participants who received the punching bag procedure were told that because physical appearance could
influence their impression of their partner, a coin would
be tossed to determine whether they would know what
their partner looked like. On the basis of the coin toss,
participants were assigned to rumination or distraction
conditions. Participants in the rumination condition
were told that they would know what their partner
looked like. On a 15-inch computer monitor, participants were shown a photo ID of another Iowa State University student of the same sex. The experimenter actually rolled a die to determine which of six photo IDs to
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show. The names and identification numbers were
removed from all IDs. The experiment then gave the
participant some boxing gloves and demonstrated how
to hit the 70-pound punching bag (Everlast, Model
4820). Participants were told that they should think
about their partner while hitting the bag.2
Participants in the distraction condition were told
that they would not know what their partner looked like.
Instead of thinking about their partner while hitting the
bag, they were told to think about becoming physically
fit. Instead of seeing a photo ID of their partner on the
computer screen, they saw a photo of someone of the
same sex exercising. The photos were taken from fitness
magazines and the experimenter rolled a die to determine which photo to show.
Participants in both the rumination and distraction
condition were told that their partner would not see
them (due to the coin toss). The participant was left
alone to hit the punching bag. They were told they could
hit it as long and as many times as they wanted to.
Because there was an intercom system in the participant’s room, the experimenter was able to time how long
the participant hit the bag and count the number of
times the participant hit the bag. The experimenter also
rated how hard the participant hit the bag on a 10-point
scale ranging from 1 (very soft) to 10 (very hard). The
experimenter also asked the participant how hard he or
she hit the bag (using the same 10-point scale). Participants then indicated how much they enjoyed hitting the
punching bag on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 (not at
all) to 10 (extremely).
Participants in the control condition did not hit the
punching bag. Instead, they sat quietly for 2 minutes.
The justification for the delay was that the experimenter
was fixing their partner’s computer. No attempt was
made to reduce participant’s anger during the 2-minute
delay. Instead, participants in the no punching bag
group did nothing at all. This allowed us to test whether
angry people are better off doing nothing at all than
engaging in cathartic activities….
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