'I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with," Woody Allen once said at the end of a standup routine. "Will you take two negative points?"
Life isn't quite like mathematics. Two wrongs do not make a right, just as two of Allen's recent films don't add up to one of his earlier ones. None the less, the gag gets something very right: sometimes you can be positive by being negative.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have now shown this to be the case with anger in the workplace. They found that people who tried to repress frustration at work were more likely to feel trapped under a glass ceiling than those who found ways to let it all out.
The advice isn't quite "if you want to get ahead, lose it first". It's important that the anger is channelled constructively. "Individuals who learn how to express their anger while avoiding the explosive and self-destructive consequences of unbridled fury have achieved something incredibly powerful in terms of overall emotional growth and mental health," said Professor George Vaillant, lead author of the study.
As is often the case, science has been slow to confirm what most people already know. Anger clearly has its proper place at work, which is neither wholly absent nor ever present. The manager who is an emotional blank is just as hard to work for as the volcanic boss, and both can do great harm by setting an unhelpful example for what kind of emotional expression is expected and accepted.
When some people are not pulling their weight, for example, isn't it quite right and proper to get more than a little peeved? Throwing things around the office isn't going to help, but showing a bit of anger is the only way of truly reflecting the importance of what is going on.
The alternative view would have us believe that the emotionally mature can achieve the same results without the need for primal emotions; calm talk will do just as well. That's not just wrong, it's creepy.
When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning, or changes for the worse.
Take the disciplining of children, for example. The parent who never shows any anger and simply dishes out punishment in cold blood comes across not as a caring guardian, but as frightening, heartless automaton. When we show emotion we show that we care, and without that, many of our actions and reactions become meaningless.
Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. As the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued in the 18th century, intellect alone is insufficient to motivate any caring for ourselves and others. As he colourfully put it, "Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Cold-hearted ethics is an oxymoron.
Repression is slightly more complicated. It's just another bit of psychobabble to think that it is always bad to try to control our feelings. People sometimes talk as though negative emotions are like fully formed objects that have to be expelled from the body. But emotions are not simply there: how we deal with them affects how they are. For instance, deal with a relatively minor irritant well at an early stage, and it will simply go away. Deal with it badly, by getting into an unnecessary row, for example, and it grows into a many-headed hydra of hatred.
The Harvard anger report is a timely reminder that emotions are in themselves neither good nor bad. What makes them so is how appropriate they are to the situation, and how we deal them. Anger, for instance, may be rehabilitated by the study, but that does not make it an unqualified good. Indeed, a report last December by a team at Ohio State University suggested that a half-hour row with a spouse can add a day to the time it takes for a wound to heal.
This doesn't contradict the Harvard study, but backs it up. The point about a protracted domestic row is that is a prime example of anger boiling over uncontrollably rather than being dealt with properly.
The famous British reserve perhaps makes it harder for us to do this. Compare us, for example, with southern Europeans. Often you will see a group of them in a bar arguing so vigorously that you're convinced a fight is going to break out. But it rarely does. Low-level anger is not just expressed, it's almost exaggerated, with the result that the full-blown variety is usually not needed.
Evidence for the benefits of this can be seen by comparing the city streets of Bristol and Bilbao on a Friday night. In both cities, young people in particular get drunk. But whereas Bristol's A&E departments are filling up by midnight with fight injuries, you rarely see as much as a scuffle in Bilbao. Alcohol disinhibits, whatever your nationality, so the most likely explanation for the difference is that the Basques bottle less anger up while the Brits use the bottle to get it out.
In other times and places, anger is seen not just as part and parcel of life, but even as a virtuous emotion. The Greek Gods were forever erupting and the God of the Old Testament is famously furious. "God judgeth the righteous," it says in Psalms 7, "and God is angry with the wicked every day." Nor is the New Testament exactly relaxed. "Be ye angry, and sin not," advised Paul to the Ephesians, "let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Jesus also showed anger, at the people in the synagogue who remained silent when he asked if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath, and when he threw a wobbly at the money changers in the temple.
In all these cases, anger is seen as a justified and proportionate response to wrongdoing. And so it should be. Progress on social justice requires the evocation of anger and guilt even more than it does love and hope. Slavery was abolished because people were enraged by its injustice and prepared to make supporters of it feel very guilty indeed. Love of thy master and hope for a better future certainly didn't do it. Nor would Emmeline Pankhurst have been more effective if she had learned to get rid of her anger and thought calm thoughts about the paternalist ruling classes. Even hatred, a generally destructive emotion, can sometimes have a place, if directed against systems and ideologies rather than peoples.
One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking. Armed with such pop-psychology, it's easy to convince ourselves we are emotionally literate when in fact we're just using crude rules of thumb to gloss over the complexities of the human psyche. We become like botanists who think that being able to label a specimen means we know all we need to know about it.
In this sense, a little learning about psychology can be a dangerous thing. Whatever the merits of positive thinking, its prevalence has oversimplified the way we conceptualise our emotional lives. "Bad" emotions have an important role to play, while sometimes "positive thinking" leads us away from uncomfortable truths into the realms of wishful thinking.
I would not want to go as far as Woody Allen and suggest that two negative points are as good as a positive one. But negative thoughts about positive thinking should not be taboo. More than that, the universal injunction to think more positively should make us just a little bit angry.
Physical signs
Taking out stress on inanimate objects is a classic indication of stress building to unconstructive levels. Watch for signs such as slamming down a phone at work, thumping a steering wheel or slapping a wall or your own leg.
Are you too cross, too often?
Anger-management expert Mike Fisher spots the signs
Physical signs
Taking out stress on inanimate objects is a classic indication of stress building to unconstructive levels. Watch for signs such as slamming down a phone at work, thumping a steering wheel or slapping a wall or your own leg.
Pointless vocalisation
If you find yourself muttering (or even yelling) to yourself about other drivers while in the car, say, or criticising them to fellow passengers, you are creating a toxic atmosphere that can lead to rash decisions. The same goes for colleagues at work.
Hyperactive impatience
A supermarket-queue classic: someone has pushed in or is taking an age, and you start shifting from foot to foot, jittering your hands and muttering. All these reactions will do is perpetuate stress rather than dissipate it.
Commuting stress
Stress is the root of almost all anger, and a bad commute exacerbates this for many people. Watch for building irritation with train or tube passengers who make too much noise or encroach on your personal space. Be aware that it is a danger sign and take steps to separate this bad experience from the working day ahead, or from dinner with your partner. Sit on a bench, or take the dog out for a walk.
Drinking tea and coffee
Stress makes you tired. Many people react by drinking endless tea and coffee; if you find yourself drinking significantly more than usual, or feel as if you urgently need to eat chocolate to boost energy levels, simply to keep yourself going, it's counterproductive. Caffeine and sugar make tiredness and stress worse once the boost wears off.
Other people's reactions
Be aware of anyone behaving abnormally around you. They often see you more clearly than you see yourself. Workmates will avoid someone angry. Children will often exploit anger and wind up a parent simply because they can. Irritating though any answering back or food throwing may be, don't ignore these signs.
Making mistakes
Someone stressed and angry will make small mistakes, drop the ball, lose things and so on. If you find yourself making an unusual number of little errors, either at work or at home, even such small things as burning food, be aware that this is a danger sign.
Catastrophising
Be very wary of overreaction. If someone makes a mistake and your response is instantly overdramatic ("We'll lose the client!"; "We'll never catch the plane!") take steps to try to relax.
Blame and shame
When your instant reaction to a problem is not to try to solve the problem but to look for someone to blame, you are in an irrational and pressured state of mind that is very conducive to anger.
"I can't handle this!"
The ultimate cause of stress is feeling unable to cope. If you think you can't handle a problem and this is equally applicable to a child's demands on your time as it is to a work problem, you are ripe for the spiral of stress that leads to anger.
First, take a deep breath
How to control and channel that rage
Breathe
Taking deep breaths reduces physical signs of anger and, by calming the body, helps calm the mind. Inhale for a count of seven, exhale for 11. Repeat several times.
Wait
Wait until you are physically calm. If you are still angry on a rational level, then you can consider what action to take in terms of desirable personal outcomes. Shouting at a colleague, or sending a vitriolic email, might be momentarily satisfying but can make your overall situation worse.
Don't deny your anger
Understand the differences between appropriate and inappropriate anger. It can be appropriate if you use it rather than letting it use you. If someone has genuinely mistreated you, use your anger as part of an attempt to achieve positive outcomes: if a waiter is rude to you, don't shout at them, complain to manager.
Consider the consequences
Someone else might be driving terribly, but what action can you take? If you get angry in a car, you might kill or be killed. If you get angry at work, what impact will this have on your job? Anger can have long-term consequences. Making an effort to bring them to mind can help calm you.
Eat properly
Eating healthily, resting properly and drinking plenty of water reduces tiredness and stress and so controls irrational emotion.
Control your environment
Anger thrives in a toxic environment, feeding on itself. If you manage to stay calm at work or in a car, other people will be less stressed and angry, which will in turn help you control your anger.
Join a support group
If you need to let out what you feel, do so to someone you know and trust, who can talk through the causes and consequences of any action. Understanding and learning from anger is a crucial part of controlling it.
Take responsibility
As soon as you start to blame others, focus on your own responsibility for any mistakes at home or in the workplace. This will help you build up the self-awareness that underpins anger-management.
Recognise tiredness and stress
These are part of self-awareness, but they are specific skills, and everyone will have individual signs they should recognise, be they irritability or making mistakes.
Get help
If anger is really blighting your life, do seek professional help.
• Mike Fisher is the author of Beating Anger and director of the British Association of Anger Management. He was talking to Robbie Hudson
