Seven Sins: Anger should be well understood as it is responsible for most interpersonal violence, says Aaron Sell

Down To Earth (DTE) speaks to scientists and authors to take stock of what we know so far about the emotions of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth; the historical debates around them and the critical gaps in our understanding.

In the twelfth part, DTE speaks to Aaron Sell, an associate professor of psychology and criminology at Heidelberg University, US. Sell’s research interests include anger, hatred and aggression. Sell has an upcoming paper on extreme anger.

Q. Is it important to understand anger?

A. A good friend of mine was the victim of a very violent crime. I experienced anger at the time. But, in retrospect, I think, it was hatred, which are somewhat different emotions. So, that is what got me started on that particular topic.

The reason that anger should be well understood is because, I think, more than any other emotion, it is responsible for most of the interpersonal violence in the world, most of the cases of assault and homicide. If you look at how most homicides work, it typically involves unmarried men getting into a fight over something trivial. For example, there was a case in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where a man shot another because he had shovelled his snow and blocked his driveway. They got into an argument and one shot the other. I think from a societal point of view, that is important to understand.

There are more common cases. Anger can damage relationships. It can help your relationships, too. On the other hand, anger is important because if you have never experienced it, people can take advantage of you. There is a reason anger evolved. So, when you understand the grammar of anger, the variables, and how they work, it can better help you resolve conflicts because you can specify exactly what it is that you are angry about.

Q. What triggers homicides or violence? Is it anger or aggression?

A. Anger is an emotional programme. It is a part of natural selection that helps us bargain for better treatment. Aggression is defined, usually, as behaviour, muscle movement, or something you do that imposes a cost on someone else. There are different definitions of aggression. In most cases, aggression, I think, comes from anger. But there are other causes of aggression as well. It can be fear, hatred and jealousy.

Aggression can come from a cost-benefit analysis. Think of a hitman or somebody who uses aggression during a crime not because they want to hurt someone but because they want to get access to money.

The bottom line is that some degree of anger is good. But extreme levels result in some kind of violence. You can find instances of extreme anger where a person ruins their own life. Take the case of the man in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who shot his neighbour over snow shovelling. When he was done with that, he went back to his home and shot himself, presumably because he did not see any point in continuing to live. When people get angry, they do not make the best decisions.

So, there are certainly problems with anger. If you stack them up, anger can be devastating to marriages, relationships and friendships.

Q. Why would anger evolve in humans if it can inflict damage?

A. We evolved from people who did get angry. They got angrier under some circumstances than others, and for different reasons. When they were angry, they became violent or aggressive in some circumstances, but not in others. So, what you end up with is a very complicated system. This makes sense because if you think about our evolutionary past, the function of anger, I argue, is that it gets people to respect you. It is a way of saying that you cannot treat me this way. And then when the person apologises, anger goes away.

Evolutionarily, the amount of respect you were given in the past had a dramatic impact on your probability of surviving and reproducing. We are a social species and the ability to get status and respect was incredibly important. People who did not get that presumably died and they had far fewer children. We are descended from people who managed to get respect and they appear to have gotten it by using anger and by using it in very complex ways.

Just to give an example of the simple kinds of complexity. One way to get others to consider your welfare or care about you when they make decisions is that you threaten to hurt them if they do not. And so anger can become aggressive. However, aggression does not work as well in other contexts. If you think about a harmonious relationship between spouses in a healthy marriage, you do not threaten violence, typically. Instead, when you get angry, you are likely to start withholding benefits like giving them the silent treatment.

Both cases feel very different. One is inflicting aggression on the body and the other is withholding benefits. But the math is the same, which is: I am going to hurt you if you do not treat me better.

There are times when you get angry over something trivial, and all you want is for them to realise that you are right in this circumstance. For example, you might want the last donut and they want that as well. You might think they do not realise how hungry you are. So, you are not demanding that they respect you more. You just want that donut and you want them to know how important it is to you.

You see surprisingly similar patterns in other animals, too. When bald eagles, for example, are fighting over food, they lift their neck and extend their gullet to show the weight of their belly. It is a sign that this is how hungry one is. The other eagle will do that as well. Both birds will estimate who needs this more. This is relevant because the hungrier animal fights harder and longer, and therefore, you probably should not pay those costs to fight them.

Q. What drives lynching or any hate crime? Is it usually anger or hate?

A. I think, most of those cases are driven by hatred. So, I make a distinction here because anger is much more common. The goal of anger, if you look at how it works, is to get someone to recalibrate and to treat you better. This is why, for example, apologies work.

You hate people who do horrible things to you, or those who ruin your life, or [people whom you] envy because it often leads to hatred. You cannot apologise your way out of hatred, typically. When I started thinking, well, what is the difference between anger and hatred? What is hatred trying to do? What problem is it solving among our ancestors? And then you think what do you do when you hate people? Well, you tell people about it and how terrible they are. You spread bad information about them. And some of that can be lies. You also want bad things to happen to people you hate. I pulled all this information together and saw what hatred is doing: It is trying to neutralise people whose existence is bad for you.

If you think about how our ancestors lived, there would have been certain adversaries whose existence was either good or bad for our ancestors. If they were hurting our ancestors, the ancestors should have been selected to solve that problem. How do you solve that problem? Well, you heap costs on the adversaries as badly as you can, and as efficiently as you can. They then either die or leave because their lives have gotten worse. Or they lose power, like a dictator, for example.

Anger has a face. But hatred does not seem to have one. If you look at really famous actors or actresses who play hateful characters, Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones is a good example. Her face just gets kind of intense when she hates someone. It does not change the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and the like. And the aggression that hatred motivates seems very different, too. It starts with pushing and shoving or name-calling, and then neither side backs down, and neither side apologises. It escalates and violence happens and it may be lethal.

It also triggers a different kind of violence, which is: I am going to wait until you are not looking, and then I am going to mess you up. Or I am going to hurt you as badly as I can, and then laugh about it. Hate is designed to remove and neutralise the target. It has this sort of sadistic quality. You will see that in lynchings.

People can relate to hate very easily. Think about any movie with a villain, and in the end, they get what is coming to them. We are happy to watch them suffer.

Hatred is driven by issues of envy, much more than anger. We are designed for small-scale societies. When we look at wealthy and successful people, we think our lives would be better if it were not for them because then we would have all the riches or success. It leads to a kind of envy. Then you start spreading bad rumours about them and hating them, and occasionally they get slaughtered.

(as told to Rohini Krishnamurthy)

This is the thirteenth of an 18-part series.

This was first published as part of the cover story of the 16-31 May, 2024 Print edition of Down To Earth