Jennifer Parlamis

And we found that when people vented to a friend, to a third party, they vented with more internal controllable attributions.

And those internal controllable attributions led to that anger.

And that's that self-reinforcing cycle that I just talked about a moment ago.

When they vented to the offender, interestingly, they used fewer internal controllable attributions and they actually felt less angry.

So we realized, we concluded, the answer to why verbal venting doesn't work is because you're not changing those attributions.

You're just rehearsing those attributions that led to your anger in the first place.

Okay, so answer to question one.

But that didn't answer question two, which is why do we keep doing it if it's not releasing our anger?

So

What we did next was venting doesn't happen in a vacuum.

There's usually somebody responding to us.

So we said, let's look at responses now.

And we asked the third party, that friend, to give some responses to the person venting.

They either reinforced.

the interpretation, so those explanations with internal controllable attributions, they would say something like, yeah, you're right to be angry.

They are really selfish.

That would be reinforcing.

Or we ask them to reinterpret.

Well, have you thought about some other possible causes for this, maybe something external?

In both cases, the anger didn't change.