Anger Can Lead To Better Results When Tackling Tricky Tasks, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 90
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But when it comes to tackling a tricky task, researchers have found that getting angry can also be a powerful motivator. The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral. "These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success," said Dr Heather Lench, the first author of the study.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (PDF), details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 people, to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances. In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams. The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states -- although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.
The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams. In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire. "This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions," the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (PDF), details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 people, to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances. In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams. The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states -- although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.
The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams. In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire. "This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions," the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.
yes. trench warfare is a tricky task. (Score:2)
there, i said my piece.
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Kind of like what the USA did with Irak, Afghanistan and others.
Yes, I know it's dirty whataboutism, but stupid statements deserve stupid answers.
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Only I did not try to invalidate it.
What I wanted to show is this is "standard behavior", as abhorrent as it may be.
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It's really not dirty whataboutism, because I think a lot of people in the US would agree. It's a different world 20 years later, and a lot of us saw the unbelievable amount of damage and chaos caused by military adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan, with absolutely nothing gained except taking some real shithead individuals off the board.
That could have been accomplished with so much less expenditure of money, equipment, and lives.
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The point of the war was to enrich our military industrial complex. Politicians just told you it was to get the "bad guy".
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I'm the angry coder yelling at his colleagues (Score:3)
but it all makes sense now.
Let me print out the article and hand it out to everyone.
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Fuck you, I'm doing my best work here!
Re:I'm the angry coder yelling at his colleagues (Score:4, Funny)
So, managers are constantly pissing everyone off on purpose, to try to drive productivity?
The pieces are all starting to come together now....
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I'm the guy yelling at my screen and forgetting that my office door is open. "Why won't you fucking work?!"
Sounds like BS to me (Score:2)
Anger? How am I supposed to focus with that? My guess is these Psych people do not know hat "tricky" means and think "work-intensive but simple" is "tricky".
False (Score:4, Funny)
I disagree with their conclusion, but can't be bothered to waste time writing a rebuttal.
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Anger is clearly useful in some circumstances, otherwise we would not have evolved to have that emotion.
Its the extremes that are harmful.
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I was actually kidding in my comment, but upon thinking about it --I'm not sure if the fact that angry people won out in evolution meant that was "better" .. for example if one of my ancestors survived by being evil that doesn't mean it's a "good" or even useful strategy to have today. Maybe society would have been happier and more advanced today if certain people who were not able to replicate had made it through.
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Depends how you measure things. If being evil can be equated to being greedy at all cost, some of the most successful people in the world could be classified as evil.
Re:False (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree with their conclusion, but can't be bothered to waste time writing a rebuttal.
If only you were a little angrier, you might have bothered.
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You're focusing too narrowly, and so are they. There are tasks for which anger is useful, and others for which it it detrimental. And there are also tasks for which a certain degree of anger is beneficial, but any more is detrimental. E.g. handling "Why is that compiler throwing *that* error?" benefits by a finely controlled degree of anger. Too much and you get fixated on a (probably) wrong answer.
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There is not one single problem that's been solved by getting angry.
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You are thinking in to narrow a scope. Sometimes anger drives one to violence and sometimes violence or threat of violence is the only practical solution to a problem.
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Anagrams and Skiing Games? (Score:2)
Legitimate proxys for tricky tasks prove tricky to find it seems.
If anger helps because it engenders persistence, then maybe go right for the jugular and measure persistence and it's relationship with tricky tasks.
Also put more effort into identifying tricky tssks.
I suggests Microsoft Word's header numbering system as one of the trickier things to make work.
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It's true that Microsoft products do elicit a lot of anger in people...
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Especially when the heading numbering in the document goes:
1. Heading # The intended numbering, supposed to be followed by 2. Heading.
Heading # with the number missing
3. Heading # Magically picking the numbering up again
Heading # In a completely different font.
All with exactly the same "Header 1" styles.
This is on an up to date 365 office.
Someone at Microsoft has spent 30 years not fixing this.
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I suggest Microsoft Word's header numbering system as one of the trickier things to make work.
I feel your pain. In a simple document it is relatively easy to add the equivalent of {page_field} of {numpages_field} using the Fields option of Quick Parts.
The problem gets difficult when you break the document into Sections using the Section_Break. This means your headers and footers can either remain linked to the previous section or start a new header and footer format. If you elect not to link to the previous section, then you sometimes have to force the page numbering to start at a new value in s
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I wrote a whole book in Latex, because word sucks for long documents.
See the link in my sig.
I feel just a bit better about those times now (Score:2)
I'd slam the keyboard down. Not hard enough to break it, but just to make a little noise and I'd say, "You know what the problem is with computers? They don't understand violence".
Computers DO understand violence (Score:2)
It's remarkable how often a well expressed threat has encouraged hardware to start behaving in my experience.
Actually it's scary... ;)
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You can't tell me "hitting the side of a machine" hasn't at least "sometimes" fixed the problem, at least for a little bit.
There's definitely an "Oops Factor" at work (Score:3)
My girlfriend and I go to a trivia contest once in a while. One of their oft-repeated rounds involves anagrams. We've both found that there are some anagrams one of us will solve instantly. They're never the same ones, and they're definitely not easy. Anger is not a factor. We're both having an excellent time, enjoying a mid-week night out with friends. Some of the other tests might work, but if any of the subjects are anything like us, we do this often enough to monkey wrench any one involving anagrams.
They missed the obvious, REAL, conclusion: (Score:4, Interesting)
"These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,"
These findings ACTUALLY demonstrate that increased effort toward attaining a goal frequently results in greater success.
This missed conclusion demonstrates the difference between Western and Eastern attitudes education.
Western education focuses on what you're good at already, and motivation/confidence to drive success. People fail until they feel motivated and confident.
Easter education focuses on persistence and doing something until you become good at it. Motivation and confidence comes from continued improvement.
Time and time again, I see this attitude difference pop up in places like Slashdot, when it comes to learning. A lot of people here seem to take offense at suggestions that people try to learn things that don't come naturally to them. As though people should only do what they're good at without effort, and never step outside their comfort zone.
It's no surprise that this misses the obvious lesson - SPEND THE EFFORT - and instead focuses on completely the wrong thing: how to trick people into spending the required effort. One of these days, people in the West need to learn to stop trying to find shortcuts and self-trickery, and put your adult-pants on and DO THE BLOODY WORK.
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There's nothing wrong with focusing on things that come naturally to you, because you can progress further if you do that. However, it shouldn't be exclusive. Doing things that don't come naturally to you broadens your horizon and widens your skill-set, which enables you to solve a wider range of problems and to do so better because you're not trying to solve problems with an over-narrow perspective.
It is difficult to see what the ideal balance should be. My inclination is that you want a 65/35 split - 65%
Anger is not identical to frustration or rage. (Score:2)
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I prefer persistence to anger. Anger blunts the rational mind and leads to shortcuts that may or may not actually be valid. ReiserFs was probably coded in anger - it had lots of bugs, tended to lose data a lot, and was unmaintainable once Hans Reiser was hauled off to prison. When it worked, it worked brilliantly, but it was erratic. And that will be a typical outcome for code coded in anger.
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In its constructive form, it just means fearless determination. That only becomes toxic when there's no way forward despite your will, or when the determination is toward destructive purposes.
Anger. Anger can be an exceptionally useable tool. But like all tools, it has a place and time and must be used with discretion and purpose. Yes - determination as you noted.
I was supposed to be an utter failure, through a series of childhood events. And I wasn't pleased at all about people believing that, from my family to my public school teachers - basic society at that point. So I set out to prove them all wrong, and succeeded spectacularly in that effort. I did have a certain tightly controlled ange
Of course it works (Score:2)
Big surprise: Anger helps people solve angerrams!
Also useful for aligning Eludeium Q-32 Detonator Modules.
Angry Coding with Inverted Video (Score:2)
DARK MODE:
Release your anger.
Strike down that bug!
LIGHT MODE:
"Is writing code in anger more powerful?"
No. Quicker. More seductive.
"But I've got sprint deliverables, master!"
Fear is the path to the dark side...fear leads to anger...anger leads to bugs...bugs lead to suffering.
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Fear is the path to the dark side...fear leads to anger...anger leads to bugs...bugs lead to suffering.
Bugs lead to users suffering. This is not the same thing.
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Having done plenty of triage for obscure bugs, I can say that developers suffer too.
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"Users exist to put a test load on the system." - A fellow IBM Sr. Systems Programmer in the 1980s.
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Bugs lead to job security!
Yoda probably wouldn't ever come out and say that, though.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Score:2)
You made a mistake Dio.
Just one.
You made me mad.
Fear leads to anger (Score:2)
Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
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Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Not if anger is controlled.
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"Wisdom comes through suffering."
- Aeschylus
Huh... (Score:2)
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So "facts don't care about your feelings" is a skill on the part of facts.
No, for example - It doesn't matter how angry anyone gets. Trump still lost the election. Anger doesn't change facts.
The skill is manipulating the person who has that anger, to make them support Trump despite the facts.
Re:Lot of snowflakes on Slashdot these days. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. We're geeks, we understand the nature of problems and we know that anger is not conducive to rational thought or thorough thought.
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On one hand, that's true.
On the other hand, anger can be a strong motivator.
Too much anger is thought-terminating.
But just a little bit has led to a lot of important advances because people were just pissed off with the status quo...
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Not really. We're geeks, we understand the nature of problems and we know that anger is not conducive to rational thought or thorough thought.
But, that is uncontrolled anger. I used controlled anger as a personal goad to prove a lot of people not only wrong, but so wrong that they were foolishly wrong. Nothing like surpassing your critics by orders of magnitude.
Then in the ultimate revenge- I let them off the hook for their foolishness.
And then, in the ultimate control - the anger is discarded. The fossil vestiges of the anger is a certain naughty glee when I tell my story.
So a person can be quite rational, and thinking things through while
Well, Halleluja !!! .... (Score:2)
Anger Can Lead To Better Results When Tackling Tricky Tasks, Study Finds
Well, Halleluja !!! This study just validated my entire approach to C, Java and especially Perl programming.
That just proves (Score:2)
That they're using the Dark Side of the Force. Which means the real problem-solvers of the world are all Sith!
You mean eventually. (Score:2)
"These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success"
Frequently?
Those who get angry eventually find success. Through persistence yes, but not before they've possibly broken shit getting there. Out of anger. We've all seen that too many times, and may have exhibited it a time or two out of frustration.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Solving problems is like any other skill. Takes practice to master a method. Anger doesn't usually help beyond the very specific environment that calls for violence to succeed.
Until you become so angry (Score:2)
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When channeled properly, laziness causes you to want tools that make your job easier; anger cause
One more contribution (Score:2)
Negative Emotions... (Score:1)
Dissatisfaction is the catalyst to solving all problems.
Yes and... (Score:3)
Hitting your thumb with that hammer does make you a better carpenter because, after a couple of hits, you learn not to do that anymore.
It can help (Score:2)
(Googling reminded me of the title "Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts" - Peter McWilliams.)
can confirm (Score:2)
Absolutely. I'm a very calm person. Most people have never seen me angry. But an impossible computer problem can manage that. Usually I get angry, upset, shout at the shitty machine to stop fucking with me and why? why? WHY ??? and that goes on for a minute or two and then I suddenly calm down with a quiet "oh, yeah, that's why and here's how to solve this."
The Big Question (Score:2)
Will this study prove to be reproducible? Over half of all psychology studies have proven to be non-reproducible [nature.com]. No one should accept the results of studies like this until someone else has independently confirmed it.
Angry Texans (Score:1)
Correlation is not causation. (Score:1)
The angry ones are right more than the neutral ones, but it's not because being angry makes you smarter; it's because being smarter makes you angry when everyone around you is too stupid to even care about the job.
Yes (Score:2)
That's why I spend so much time on Slashdot.
You can catch even more flies (Score:2)
...with *shit*.
Anger as a self motivator (Score:2)
I've found that I have to get pissed at the situation to really change it. If I just agree with something that isn't enough. "Hmm, losing 10 lbs would be a good idea." vs "I'm so sick of this fucking gut!"
Really? (Score:2)
In my experience, anger at work is usually expressed by the refusal to put down that hammer and use the screwdriver that's right in front of you instead.
Ski with hate in your heart (Score:2)
As Bill Burr said it: (Score:2)
Losing your shit is part of the process of fixing something.
Everybody does that.
Being Angry needs resources (Score:2)
You will get tired, hungry and fighting to stay angry. After that you will start to make mistakes and won't be open minded to recognize them.
But it would be so cool to act like the Wolf of Wall Street! Go ahead!
Finally! (Score:2)
This explains Windows
Angry (Score:2)
Don't reply when you're angry. https://twitter.com/Fact/statu... [twitter.com]