The relationship between anxiety and anger expression

The purpose of this study was an attempt to measure the relationship between anxiety and outwardly expressed anger within a naturally occurring anxiety evoking situation. Is there a relationship between state/trait anxiety and outwardly expressed anger? In the event there is a relationship, what is the strength of that relationship? A total of 204 subjects (i.e., 202 undergraduate and two graduate students) from Tennessee State University completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI). In addition, a biographical questionnaire was designed for this study that included demographic items that focused on age, marital status and race, a manipulation check, the anger-related background of subjects, the previous legal experiences (subjects and their family members) and the utilization of psychological services. It was found that a relationship does exist between both state and trait anxiety and outwardly expressed anger. As expected, the relationship generally appears to be stronger between trait anxiety and outwardly expressed anger. Other significant findings in this study related to significant effects between the basic demographic variables, manipulation checks and anger-related background of subjects and family members, which reinforces the correlational findings that a relationship does appear to exist between anxiety and anger