Children's responses to different forms of expression of anger between adults

Anger is not a homogeneous stimulus, but can vary on a variety of dimensions and domains. This study examined children's responses to anger as a function of: (a) the mode of expression of anger (nonverbal, verbal, verbal-physical), and (b) whether or not anger between others was resolved. Children were presented with videotaped segments of angry and friendly interactions and asked questions concerning their responses. All angry interactions, including non-verbal anger, were perceived as negative events and elicited negative emotions. Unresolved anger was perceived as a far more negative event than resolved anger and induced greater feelings of anger and distress in children. Verbal-physical anger was perceived as the most negative form of expression of anger. Boys reported more angry feelings in response to anger than girls. Distress responding was greater in children from homes in which there was interparent physical aggression and in children with behavior problems. Finally, the utility of this methodology is supported by relatively high test-retest reliability and limited evidence of context effects.     

Primary school teachers’ restricted and elaborated anger

This article examines the cognitive appraisals associated with the emotion of anger based on interviews with teachers. An analysis of these appraisals demonstrated that teachers experienced different forms of anger depending on whether they were relating to other adults or their pupils. Anger in relation to children was based on persistent goal blockage, the build up of frustration and the assignment of blame. Such anger, referred to here as restricted anger, was expressed at the time and seemed to involve limited cognitive elaboration. By contrast, anger in relation to parents and colleagues was associated with blaming others for having brought about an unfair/unjust outcome and a perceived threat to self. Such anger, referred to here as elaborated anger, was not displayed immediately but appeared to be cognitively dwelled upon and maintained. These two forms of anger and their appraisals are examined and their implications for teachers and teaching considered.     

Anger in relation to school learning

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the study of emotions. This is especially true for anger, which had neither been studied intensively in main stream psychology nor in educational psychology. The focus in the first part of this article is on the conceptualization and measurement of anger. A distinction is made between various anger constructs: “Trait-Anger” refers to a frequency judgment about experiencing anger, “Anger-In” and “Anger-Out” are typical ways in which students express their anger, and “Anger-Control” refers to the way students try to reduce their Anger-In or Anger-Out. In the second half of the article, an attempt is made to demonstrate that specific ways of expressing and controlling one's anger may differentially affect school results, as reflected in grade-point-average (GPA) for native language learning. The predictive power of the separate anger measures is investigated as well as the predictive power of various product terms including anger measures, anxiety and coping profiles. The implications of these findings for learning and instruction are discussed.     

Making Political Anger Possible: A Task for Civic Education

The article asks whether political anger has a legitimate place in a democracy, as this is a political system designed to resolve conflicts by peaceful negotiation. It distinguishes personal from social anger and political anger, to focus explicitly on the latter. It argues that both the feeling and expression of political anger are subject to normative constraints, often specific to social status and gender. The article examines arguments, including those of Seneca, in favour of an anger‐free society. It concludes, however, that a democracy cannot dispense with political anger, which has a vital role to play in protecting things of value. This role demands a civic education such that when democratic values are under threat citizens will not feel apathetic or simply fearful, but angry and possessed of a repertoire of ways of expressing democratic anger.     

Display Rules for Anger and Aggression in School-Age Children

2 related studies addressed the development of display rules for anger and the relation between use of display rules for anger and aggressiveness as rated by school peers. Third, fifth, and seventh graders (ages 8.4, 10.9, and 12.8, respectively) gave hypothetical responses to videotaped, anger provoking vignettes. Overall, regardless of how display rules were defined, subjects reported display rules more often with teachers than with peers for both facial expressions and actions. Reported masking of facial expressions of anger increased with age, but only with teachers. Girls reported masking of facial expressions of anger more than boys. There was a trend for aggressive subjects to invoke display rules for anger less than nonaggressive subjects. The phenomenon of display rules for anger is complex and dependent on the way display rules are defined and the age and gender of the subjects. Most of all, whether children say they would behave angrily seems to be determined by the social context for revealing angry feelings; children say they would express anger genuinely much more often with peers than with teachers.     

Can We Teach Justified Anger?

The question of whether there is such a thing as teachable justified anger encompasses three distinct questions: (1) the psychological question of whether the emotions in general, and anger in particular, are regulatable; (2) the moral question of whether anger can ever be morally justified; and (3) the educational question of whether we have any sound methods at our disposal for teaching justified anger. In this paper I weave Aristotelian responses to those questions together with insights from the current psychology literature on emotion regulation and conclude that there is no good reason for teachers of moral education to shy away from the teaching of justified anger in the classroom, via various means and methods.     

Learning problems, anger, perceived control, and misbehavior

Fifty-four students diagnosed as having learning disabilities (LD) and 73 students in regular education were administered the School Anger Inventory and the Perceived Control at School Scale. Teachers and parents rated student deportment and motivation. Predictably, those in the LD sample indicated higher school anger levels and were rated as exhibiting more negative behavior, less positive behavior, and lower motivation for on-task performance. The samples did not differ in their ratings of perceived control, which was moderate, and were given comparable positive teacher ratings for recall of relevant and interesting material. Significant correlations between school anger and behavior were found only in the LD sample, and there was no significant overall relationship between school anger, behavior, and perceived control within either sample. Overall, however, students who reported both a high level of anger and high perceived control were found to exhibit more negative behavior than those with high anger and low perceived control.     

Getting Angry at Peers: Associations with Liking of the Provocateur

We examined how preschoolers coped with anger in interactions with well liked and not well liked peers. The free-play interactions of preschool-aged children ( M age = 66.27 months) were observed for 6 months. The frequency, causes, and intensity of children's anger, as well as their anger-related reactions, were compared for incidents provoked by peers who were "really liked" to those provoked by peers who were liked only "a little bit." Although there were no differences in the intensity of anger provocations by well liked and not well liked provocateurs, children's responses to provocations by well liked peers were more controlled than was the case for anger provoked by peers who were not well liked. In general, boys were more responsive to how they felt about the provocateur than were girls. These findings suggest that anger episodes with well liked children were less stressful than those with peers who were not well liked.     

英汉“愤怒”情感隐喻的物质化映射系统

结合前人在英汉"愤怒"情感隐喻方面的研究成果,在系统探讨英汉"愤怒"情感隐喻的三种原型表达形式,即"愤怒是火"、"愤怒是容器中的热液体"、"愤怒是气"的基础上,发现"愤怒"情感隐喻存在着情感经验的物质化映射系统。同时,也为更好地进行英汉"愤怒"情感隐喻翻译提供参考和启示。     

Prenatal Risk and Infant Regulation: Indirect Pathways via Fetal Growth and Maternal Prenatal Stress and Anger

Pathways from maternal tobacco, marijuana, stress, and anger in pregnancy to infant reactivity and regulation (RR) at 9 months of infant age were examined in a low‐income, diverse sample beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy, with fetal growth and postnatal stress/anger as potential mediators, and infant sex as a moderator. Participants were 247 dyads (173 substance‐exposed infants). There were no direct effects of prenatal risk on RR and no moderation by sex. However, there were significant indirect effects on RR via poor fetal growth and higher postnatal anger. The study adds to the sparse literature on joint effects of tobacco and marijuana, and highlights the role of fetal growth and maternal anger as important pathways from prenatal risk to infant RR.     

Brief Research Report: The Message Behind Teacher Emotions

Abstract

We hypothesized that students use the message behind teacher emotions to interpret the cause of their failure and to form competence beliefs; hence, in failure situations teacher anger could be beneficial. In Experiment 1, participants made judgments about another student’s failure in the face of teacher pity versus anger. Lack of ability attributions were made and low competence was perceived, when pity was interpreted as the teacher attributed the failure to lack of ability. Lack of effort attributions were made when anger was interpreted as the teacher attributed the failure to lack of effort. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining students responses to their own failure. Findings imply that expressing anger is less detrimental than many teachers suppose.     

Development of the Multidimensional School Anger Inventory for males

Drawing upon research which conceptualizes anger as a multidimensional construct including three associated components—anger experience (affective anger), hostility (anger cognitions), and anger expression (aggression, assertion, and withdrawal)—the preliminary development of a Multidimensional School Anger Inventory (MSAI) for adolescents is described. This scale is a modification and extension of the School Anger Inventory and was developed to assess the affective, cognitive, and expressive aspects of anger using items having school-relevant content. Data were collected through personal interviews of 202 males from three different schools: School 1 included general education students in a parochial school in grades 6 through 12; School 2 included students attending general education or mainstreamed special education classes at a public intermediate school; and School 3 included students participating in a public day treatment program for youths with serious emotional disturbance. Scale development is discussed focusing on item development and scale refinement through item and factor analyses. Four factors were identified that accounted for 43.3% of the common variance. Anger Experience, Cynical Attitudes, and Anger Expression were identified as major clusters with the anger expression items bifurcating into Destructive Expression and Positive Coping components. The resulting 31-item scale has strong psychometric qualities and appears to have promise for use in research, treatment planning, and outcome evaluations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The relationship between adult health and childhood maltreatment,as moderated by anger and ethnic background

Childhood maltreatment, anger, and racial/ethnic background were examined in relation to physical health, psychological well-being, and blood pressure outcomes. This study used data from a diverse sample of African American, Latino, and Caucasian participants (N = 198). Results from a series of multiple regressions indicated anger and total childhood maltreatment were robust predictors of poorer health. Although correlational analyses found maltreatment from the mother and father were associated with poorer health outcomes, when considered as part of the regression models, only a relationship between maltreatment from the mother and physical health was found. Greater anger scores were linked with lower blood pressure, particularly systolic blood pressure. Generally, more psychological and physical symptom reporting was found with greater anger scores, and higher levels of total maltreatment also predicted physical symptoms. The pattern of interactions indicated anger was more detrimental for African American participant's (and marginally so for Latino participant's) physical health. Interestingly, interactions also indicated total childhood maltreatment was related to fewer symptoms for Latino participants. Although child maltreatment may be viewed as a moral and/or human rights issue, this study provides evidence that it can also be viewed as a public health issue. Our study demonstrated that known health risk factors such as anger and maltreatment may operate in a different pattern dependent on ethnic/cultural background. The findings suggest health and health disparities research would benefit from greater exploration of the differential impact of certain moderating variables based on racial/ethnic background.     

'Anger is a Short Madness': Dealing with Anger in Émile's Education

This paper considers the place of anger in human development and culture, as discussed by Rousseau in Émile. It is argued that Rousseau presents anger as intimately associated with imperious self-assertion, and with a representation of others as malign and obstructive. If this pattern of thought and expectation is consolidated, the will to dominate these supposedly obstructive others becomes the central preoccupation. The madness lies in the idea contained in this that failure in having one's desires satisfied signals a wrong, an abuse one has suffered. Regulation of anger is necessary to achieving a proper sense of our finitude, limitation and a reasoned sense of our dependence on others.     

Raising a Difficult Child: Interplay Among Children’s Negative Emotionality Traits,Maternal Parenting,and Children’s Cognitive Development

Research Findings: The present study examined (a) whether children’s negative emotionality traits (anger proneness and unsoothability) interactively predict mothers’ authoritarian parenting (AP) and (b) whether children’s negative emotionality moderates the associations between AP and children’s performance on a spatial cognitive task. Eighty mother–child dyads were recruited from Seoul, Korea (children’s age = 45–66 months). The findings were as follows. First, when children were prone to anger and were simultaneously difficult to soothe, mothers were inclined to show more AP. However, when children were relatively low in either of the traits, such as when children were difficult to soothe but not prone to anger, higher levels of unsoothability were associated with less AP. Second, depending on the degree of children’s anger proneness, the associations between children’s spatial intelligence and AP varied. Among children with higher levels of anger proneness, less AP was associated with lower performance on a spatial cognitive task, whereas the opposite pattern was observed among children with lower anger proneness. Practice or Policy: This study implies that the configurations of temperamental traits and the levels of parental control need to be considered in designing teacher and parent education programs, probably in relation to the cultural context.     

婴儿易怒性、母亲回应与婴儿接受性合作之间的关系

采用情境性观察的方法,本研究对30名一岁半婴儿的易怒性、母亲回应与婴儿接受性合作之间的关系进行研究.结果表明:婴儿的易怒性与婴儿接受性合作呈显著负相关;母亲的回应与婴儿的接受性合作呈显著正相关;婴儿易怒性、母亲回应影响婴儿的接受性合作;婴儿的易怒性与母亲的回应对婴儿接受性合作具有交互作用.在与婴儿日常接触中,父母应注意婴儿的气质特征,并积极关注那些反映婴儿状态与需要的信号,形成与婴儿气质特点相一致的期望与要求,对于那些难以相处或易怒的婴儿,父母特别是承担较多照顾责任的母亲更应给予温暖、恰当的回应,这将有助于提高这种气质类型婴儿的接受性合作倾向与行为,进而帮助他们调节自身情绪,与他人积极交往.     

Emotion Expression Processes in Children''s Peer Interaction: The Role of Peer Rejection, Aggression, and Gender

The goal of the current study was to investigate sociometric status, aggression, and gender differences in children's expression of anger, happiness, and sadness. Participants were 111 second-grade African American boys and girls, half rejected and half average sociometric status, and half aggressive and half nonaggressive as assessed by their peers. Children interacted with a confederate in two standardized competitive game paradigms. Participants' expressions of anger, happiness, and sadness were observationally coded across facial, verbal intonation, and nonverbal modalities. Rejected children expressed more facial and verbal anger than average-status children. Rejected children also expressed more nonverbal happiness than average children, but only during turns of the game that were favorable to the participant. Finally, boys expressed more facial, verbal, and nonverbal anger than girls.     

Young Children's Understanding of the Causes of Anger and Sadness

This study investigated kindergarten children's understanding of the causes of anger and sadness. Previous research has shown that before 6 or 7 years of age, children have difficulty distinguishing hypothetical situations designed to evoke anger from those designed to evoke sadness. In this project, 80 kindergarten children (ages 5-1 to 6-5, M = 5-10) predicted and explained protagonists' emotional responses to a variety of hypothetical events. The results showed that intentional harm was not the feature young children used to distinguish anger from sadness. Children predicted anger most often when they believed that protagonists could change undesirable situations and reinstate their goals and when children focused on the person or conditions that brought about undesirable situations. Children predicted sadness most often when they believed that goal reinstatement was impossible and focused on the losses that would ensue as a result.     

Coping with background anger in early childhood

Normative patterns, individual styles, and developmental changes in coping with background anger (anger between others) were examined in preschoolers. Live models expressed verbalized anger toward each other while pairs of same-sex friends played in an adjacent room. 85 4- and 5-year-olds participated, playing took place in the presence of mothers, and a 7-episode sequence of background conditions (no emotion, positive, no emotion, anger, no emotion, positive, no emotion) described the experimental situation. Children were also interviewed concerning their feelings during others' anger. Preschoolers evidenced heightened arousal, that is, greater distress, social sharing, preoccupation, and positive affect, concurrent with exposure to background anger. Increased verbal aggressiveness in play occurred in the period following exposure. Coping styles initially identified from behavioral emotional responses to the adults' quarrel were further delineated by contrasts on other aspects of functioning. Concerned emotional responders (46%) showed negative emotions concurrent with exposure, and later reported that they had felt sad during the fight and wanted to intervene. Unresponsive children (15%) showed no evidence of emotion, but later reported that they were angry. Ambivalent responders (35%) showed high emotional arousal during exposure, typified by both positive and negative emotions. Later they reported feeling happy but disregulated and were most likely to become physically and verbally aggressive in play with a friend. Analyses on a subsample (N = 43) also seen as toddlers showed that responses to background anger changed markedly, but precursors of preschoolers' coping styles were evident in toddlers' behavioral responses.     

The Relations of Emotionality and Regulation to Children's Anger-related Reactions

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of emotionality (intensity and negative emotion) and regulation (attentional control, mode of coping) to preschoolers' naturally occurring anger reactions. School personnel's ratings of 4–6-year-olds' constructive coping and attentional control were associated with boys' constructive anger reactions whereas their ratings of acting out versus avoidant coping, emotional intensity, and anger intensity generally were correlated with low levels of constructive reactions to anger. Mothers' reports of children's constructive coping and low emotional intensity were associated with children's use of nonabusive language to deal with anger, whereas aggressive coping and negative emotionality were associated with escape behavior when angered. The findings are consistent with the conclusion that individual differences in emotionality and regulatory skills are associated with children's constructive versus nonconstructive anger reactions.