Jennifer Parlamis

OK, so hold on to those questions for a minute, because I want to back up and talk a little bit about anger first.

So cognitive appraisal theorists

talk about anger as not something that happens to us, but rather something that we construct in our brain when we assign explanations to some event.

So when I was pushing the stroller and I saw my husband pushing it in this kind of odd way, I started to build these explanations, as I said, these internal, controllable causes for his behavior.

And those causal attributions led to my anger.

And they also say that anger and attributions have this recursive process.

It's a self-reinforcing process where the more I hold someone responsible for some action, the angrier I am.

And the angrier I get, the more I hold that person responsible.

So it becomes self-reinforcing cycle.

Now there's something else that happens with anger too.

Anger has action tendencies.

So it pushes us to act, to do something.

It readies us for some action.

And that's important because what I did was I vented as the action.

I took my anger and I vented, but it didn't decrease my anger.

So let me make this a little bit more personal for just a moment.

And I want you to think about your own experience with anger.

If you can, take a moment right now and recall a time where you felt angry at someone.

It could be maybe someone at work, maybe in traffic, maybe politics.

Think about what you're angry about.