Do you want to achieve your goals? She gets angry

Anger is not just a negative emotion. It can also be a powerful motivation for people to achieve their goals.

a Functional theory of emotionStudies that have been studied for decades indicate that all emotions, whether good or bad, are reactions to events and serve the purpose of alerting a person to important situations that require action.

Each feeling may require a different response: Sadness may indicate that a person needs to seek help, while anger may indicate that they need to take action to overcome a particular obstacle, for example.

In order to better understand the role of anger in achieving goals, researchers led by Heather Lynch, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of… Texas A&M UniversityIt conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 participants and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 participants.

For each experiment, describe Teach dailyResearchers elicited an emotional response (such as anger, playfulness, desire, or sadness) or a neutral emotional state. They then presented participants with a challenging goal.

In one experiment, pictures were presented to elicit specific or neutral emotional responses. Next, participants had to solve a series of word puzzles. In another case, the goal was to get high scores on a skating video game, with a game that included a difficult game and an easier game with just one jump.

In all experiments, Anger improves ability For people to achieve their goals. In some cases, this has been associated with higher scores or shorter response times. In one experiment, it also increased cheating to get a better score.

The researchers also analyzed data from a series of polls conducted during the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections. Before the election, people were asked to rate how angry they would feel if their preferred candidate did not win, with reporting only after the election. Whether they voted and for whom they voted.

Participants who indicated that they would be angry if their candidate did not win were also angry More likely to vote in electionsBut the anger had no effect on the candidate they voted for.

“These results prove that Anger increases effort To achieve the desired goal, which often leads to greater success.

Hey Scientific material It was published in American Psychological Association.