Anger ideals and their impact on emotional and physiological reactivity.

Anger ideals are socialized beliefs that people hold about their experience of anger. Three studies examined the subjective and physiological consequences of anger ideals. The first two studies explored the ways that anger ideals affect the immediate experience of anger. Individuals scoring in the anger-unacceptable range of the Anger Ideals subscale were hypothesized to have greater activation of the sympathetic nervous system when faced with an anger-eliciting event, compared to those with scores in the anger-acceptable range. Individuals with anger-unacceptable scores were also theorized to report experiencing more intense negative, self-focused emotions. The second study included an experimental manipulation of anger ideals: half the participants were told that expressing anger was advantageous, and half were told that controlling anger was advantageous. Individuals in the Anger-Unacceptable condition with anger-unacceptable scores on the Anger Ideals subscale and higher scores on the PAQ femininity scale were predicted to show the greatest levels of sympathetic nervous system activation in response to an anger-eliciting event. Findings for the first study did not support the predictions about the subjective consequences of anger ideals. There was support for the relation between anger ideals and physiological response, but the pattern of results was stronger for women than for men. The results of Study II offered little support for the hypotheses. Study III investigated the relation between anger ideals and measures of psychological well-being. In support of the hypotheses, people who believed that anger was an unacceptable emotion to experience were more likely to have depressed mood, lower self-esteem, and negative affect, and were more likely to base their self-worth on the ability to live up to their standards about emotions than people who believed that anger was an acceptable emotion. Moreover, the relation between anger ideals and depressed mood was mediated by the degree to which people based their self-worth on their ability to live up to their standards about emotions. The current model of anger ideals and their consequences may not be an adequate paradigm for studying the consequences of emotion socialization. A model of emotion socialization by Eisenberg and colleagues is considered for future studies.Ph.D.Personality psychologyPhysiological psychologyPsychologySocial psychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131944/2/9938485.pd