[HN Gopher] Anger is eliminated with the disposal of a paper wri...
___________________________________________________________________
Anger is eliminated with the disposal of a paper written because of
provocation
Author : geox
Score : 131 points
Date : 2024-04-09 12:24 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| fylham wrote:
| Cool result! But does it replicate?
| fwip wrote:
| Well, it was published today, so you'll have to wait a little
| while to find out.
| samatman wrote:
| The replication crisis won't be over until everyone who matters
| observes a social obligation to treat any unreplicated paper as
| interesting fiction.
|
| The first time is data. Only the second is science. Exceptions
| can be made, but not for this one.
| krastanov wrote:
| It was published in "Scientific Reports", a known low-quality
| journal. They are not necessary predatory like some of the
| truly bad journals, e.g., work in this journal still is
| supposed to pass the "not a low effort triviality and not
| obviously wrong" check and there are even some really cool
| things published in this journal. However, I generally take
| publications in this journal with a significant grain of salt.
|
| Also, just FYI, "Scientific Reports" is not in a specific
| subfield -- I have published on quantum computing in this
| journal. That is not too strange, there are plenty of
| "generalist" journals that are good, but I thought it could
| still be useful context to know.
| lebean wrote:
| It's totally legit. They made the participants sign an honesty
| pledge before answering the questionnaire!
| BeetleB wrote:
| No doubt, with pictures of trusted, respected authority
| figures on the walls in the room they were present in.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Give it a try yourself and let us know
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| Well, it's been hand wavily described on 50 students with
| similar socio-economical backgrounds how much more replication
| would you like? There are also some references to statistics
| terms so it must have statistical power.
| Fin_Code wrote:
| I think this has more to do with putting your thoughts in order
| but an interesting result.
| junlegi wrote:
| One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists is about
| this phenomenon.
|
| Inflammatory writ by Joanna Newsom. And as for
| my inflammatory writ? Well, I wrote it and I was not
| inflamed one bit
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DWsJDdyDK8M
| alcide wrote:
| You made my entire week. Years ago, I stumbled on a song of
| theirs and could never find it again. After recognizing the
| voice, I went through the catalogue and there it was: Peach,
| Plum, Pear. Thank you!
| junlegi wrote:
| That makes mine!
|
| I had a similar experience having first heard monkey and bear
| on the radio, but the dj failed to name the track and artist.
|
| Then some time later I heard Inflammatory Writ on an internet
| radio provider so was able to see the artist's name.
|
| In addition to immediately recognizing that distinct voice, I
| also recognized her beautifully dense poetry.
|
| A true bard.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cV6-aJlswCs
| yosito wrote:
| I suppose this method has its limits, but it is interesting to
| study ways that anger can be eliminated. I wonder if there are
| techniques for illuminating anger due to significantly injurious
| behavior.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| On writing your feelings.
|
| I remember a WAMU radio show talking about a woman who was abused
| by her father.
|
| She wrote the 5 steps of forgiveness which as I more or less
| recall go something like this:
|
| The 5 steps of asking for forgiveness.
|
| The offender to the offended should:
|
| 1. Describe in detail exactly what he/she/they did that cause the
| offense. 2. Describe in detail how those actions made the
| offended feel. 3. Explain in detail why he/she/they took such
| actions. 4. Describe in detail what corrective actions
| he/she/they should take. 5. Describe in detail what the offended
| could do to move forward.
|
| Now the interesting part is that the woman's father was already
| dead when she wrote the steps. She wrote a letter using the 5
| steps as if she was her father, who denied to his death that the
| abuse ever happened, asking for forgiveness.
|
| It helped her.
|
| I wished I could remember the name of the book or the radio show
| but it was years ago.
| blastro wrote:
| Yes, forgiveness is really for the offended, not the offender.
| It can be a heavy weight to carry.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Doesn't the offender carry a heavy weight anymore?
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| I get confused by the way people use the word "forgiveness".
|
| For me, forgiveness can only occur when I understand someone's
| point of view and determine that there was information I wasn't
| aware of or they made a mistake and what they did isn't really
| who they are.
|
| But when I read about forgiveness it seems like people also use
| the term to refer to a process of gaslighting yourself and/or
| making up a fake story to detach yourself from reality.
|
| Frankly, I see a lot of therapy this way. Some people go
| through terrible things, and some people's lives suck, but a
| lot of therapy sounds like brainwashing yourself to deal with
| it.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I would say that "brainwashing yourself to deal with it"
| actually is a useful therapeutic technique. Often the person
| who committed the offense can't be made to understand or care
| about the damage they've caused, and the next best thing then
| is to help the injured person move on as best they can.
|
| And while "brainwashing" sounds like an intellectually
| dishonest technique, we need to remember that the brain is
| not a perfectly logical instrument. The trauma that people
| seek help for carries an emotional toll usually in excess of
| the simple logical "disagreement". Therapy for such trauma is
| usually an emotional process, not a logical one.
|
| I would agree though that "forgiveness" is maybe not the best
| term for this.
| steanne wrote:
| closure?
| Zolomon wrote:
| I think part of the solution might be acceptance, that you
| can accept the situation and "forgive" the offender - which
| will relieve yourself of your feelings towards them,
| allowing yourself to let go and move on.
|
| Does that make sense?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I would say that "brainwashing yourself to deal with it"
| actually is a useful therapeutic technique
|
| This is basically the foundation of Cognitive Behavioral
| Therapy, or as I called it recently in another thread,
| "self gaslighting"
| thejazzman wrote:
| And for anyone who doubts it, just think about how
| effective marketing is on altering human
| behavior/perception.
|
| Imagine if all that effort was directed towards a
| different intent.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| > Frankly, I see a lot of therapy this way. Some people go
| through terrible things, and some people's lives suck, but a
| lot of therapy sounds like brainwashing yourself to deal with
| it.
|
| If it works, then who cares? Maybe you were wronged, but
| maybe you don't want to go through life feeling that way, so
| you let it go by sympathizing with the person who wronged
| you. And you move on. There's a limited amount of justice
| you'll be able to get in life, so it's a good idea to pick
| your battles and not stew on every single sleight because you
| want to avoid "brainwashing" yourself.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| I think there are ways to address trauma that don't involve
| divorcing yourself from reality or forgiving someone who
| doesn't deserve it.
| Y_Y wrote:
| And you've been keeping these ways to address trauma from
| the rest of the world? If people could feel better
| without forgiving their trespassers don't you think
| they'd be doing that instead?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I don't think it does work for everyone. It probably has a
| lot to do with their level of religiosity and proportion.
| fragmede wrote:
| If all therapy was, was telling yourself and accepting
| that (a) god did it, it would be way less popular, so I
| don't think it's that simple.
| barrkel wrote:
| You can't change the past. The opposite of forgiveness is
| hanging on to a past hurt. Past hurt cannot be changed.
| Forgiveness isn't gaslighting, making up a fake story, or
| brainwashing. It's letting go of something you can't change.
| dbspin wrote:
| The route of the word forgive is from early German,
| 'fragebana'. Meaning to release or give up. Forgiveness is
| not about understanding the motivation of the person who's
| hurt you. Nor is it about their penitence - although both can
| make forgiveness easier. Forgiveness is about letting go of
| the anger and resentment that continue to cause pain, long
| after the offending action is over (and even after the
| offender is dead). The purpose of forgiveness is not
| 'brainwashing' or detachment from reality. It's about letting
| go of suffering to proceed through life with less pain. Which
| allows us to be kinder and more humane people, since we're no
| longer at risk of externalising our own suffering.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| Forgiveness is about understanding the cause of the injury,
| correcting the damage, mitigating future risks, and
| restoring emotional stability /once those things are
| resolved/. The first three are necessary conditions for
| effective forgiveness.
|
| For instance, it's ineffective to forgive a spouse who
| continually beats you. It may allow you to paper over your
| emotions and have a semblance of peace. However it doesn't
| prevent the next attack or correct the damages. You need to
| get to the bottom of why this person thinks it's okay to
| beat you, or you need to get to a place where you'll be
| safe. Delusional forgiveness can get you killed in this
| situation.
|
| So please do not advise people to deploy forgiveness
| without the three necessary conditions: cause, correction,
| and mitigation. Your advice may cause them to ignore
| options for active forgiveness that will genuinely increase
| their safety and prevent future harm
|
| Example: Someone you care for has been raped, and feels the
| need to seek justice. You tell them how that will just
| cause them more pain and probably lead to no conviction,
| and offer them the idea that they can simply forgive the
| attacker and move on, as the more mature and healthy
| alternative.
|
| In that case you have not given advocacy to the person you
| cared for. You have advocated on behalf of the rapist.
|
| I'll reierate my thesis. Effective forgiveness has 3
| material parts required to make emotional release safe and
| effective:
|
| 1. Modelling the cause of harm
|
| 2. Compensating the harm done
|
| 3. Mitigating future harm
|
| Please do not advocate for forgiveness without advocating
| for these three components. Forgiveness without material
| changes creates further harm.
| Lendal wrote:
| If your history was so traumatic that you cannot forget and
| you cannot move on, then your only option, assuming you want
| to salvage what remains of your life, is to change it. Change
| your history. Is it cheating? Yes. But what is the
| alternative? You want to continue to live with the misery and
| suffering? It's not ever going to go away. Those kinds of
| memories do not fade. Time alone does not heal anything, and
| you only get one life. Do whatever you can do to salvage it.
| fragmede wrote:
| Given the success of MDMA-assisted therapy for treating
| PTSD in studies, there's hope that traumatic memories can
| be made less traumatic.
| growingkittens wrote:
| I have always found analog writing to be a powerful cognitive
| tool.
|
| Writing changes your thoughts from abstract to concrete - and
| once a thought is "out of your head" on paper, it becomes an
| entity that you can perform additional thought operations on
| (which you can then write down...etc.).
|
| Analog writing also leaves visual evidence of your thought
| process across a page. Most digital writing tools allow you to
| make the thought process disappear completely as you work. Having
| evidence of your thought process allows you to _evaluate_ your
| thought process. Very important in any kind of problem solving
| exercise.
|
| As a child, I found that writing down a thought that bothered me
| made it go away and freed my brain up to do kid stuff.
| BeetleB wrote:
| The study found that merely writing it on paper was
| insufficient, though. The point of the study is crumpling it up
| and throwing it is superior.
| growingkittens wrote:
| The study looked at keeping a paper around (underlying
| situation: a reminder active in a workspace) vs. throwing it
| away (underlying situation: removing a constant reminder).
|
| They didn't study anything in-between, such as removing the
| reminder without throwing it away.
| malfist wrote:
| Yeah, to your point, I'm curious how writing about
| frustrations/anger in a journal that you never revisit
| would compare to their treatment. It seems to help me.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Would you mind telling more about your journaling? If you
| would prefer in private, my Gmail username is the same as
| my HN username. Thank you!
| wrp wrote:
| This seems related to a much-replicated result from the practice
| of "expressive writing," also referred to informally as the
| "writing cure." Broadly, you feel better about things after
| having written about them. Remarkably, even physical ailments
| seem to be affected.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Physical ailments? What keywords should I be googling to read
| more about this? I'm not finding anything.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > Anger suppression is important in our daily life, as its
| failure can sometimes lead to the breaking down of relationships
| in families. Thus, effective strategies to suppress or neutralise
| anger have been examined
|
| This attitude is a problem in our society. Anger ends up being
| destructive because we think we have to suppress it or neutralize
| it. This just increases its strength over time until it explodes
| out violently. I doubt the strategy in the paper is any more than
| a temporary suppression of the emotion.
|
| We need to recognize that anger is a valid emotion just like any
| other. Anger becomes dangerous because we demonize it without
| trying to understand it, which just gives it strength in the long
| run.
| webstrand wrote:
| Often it is simply impossible to do anything constructive with
| anger. So techniques like the one in the article are useful,
| it's not a dismissal of anger as a valid emotion. The goal is
| to reduce redirected aggression.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Anger becomes unproductive because we shame it and suppress
| it over and over and over. If we knew how to express anger in
| a healthy way, we wouldn't need to do that (with the
| exception of edge cases, like a physical hormonal imbalance)
| mzs wrote:
| It is literally impossible for me to think objectively
| while angry.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Because of this, do you believe anger should always be
| suppressed, and never expressed or engaged with?
| tehnub wrote:
| Could you give examples of healthy expressions of or
| engagements with anger?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Not the person you replied to, but yes. "I feel angry
| that you keep touching my leg. Maybe you're even unaware
| that you're doing it, I don't know. Will you stop
| touching my leg?"
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Anger can give you the energy to address an uncomfortable
| issue that would otherwise remain suppressed. For example
| your partner doesn't do the dishes. You become angry and
| confront your partner on the subject.
|
| Now there is an opportunity for you two to work through
| the issue, and the partner has to feel some of the
| emotional impact of their behavior, preventing them from
| dismissing it.
|
| If that issue remained unaddressed, you might deal with
| the stress by reducing your view of your partner as a
| capable thoughtful individual, which is a much harder
| situation to address than a difficult emotional
| conversation.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Is it possible for you to think objectively when you're
| feeling sad? Or afraid? Or tired? Or horny? Or in love?
| 2devnull wrote:
| The world is nothing but edge cases. Expressing anger
| requires cooperation. If someone doesn't want to listen,
| and you express anger at them anyway, is it not abuse?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I appreciate you pointing this out. If we force someone
| to listen to our anger, we can see it as abuse. If we
| force someone to suppress their anger, we can see it as
| normal. It's almost as if we might normalize suppression
| and demonize expression.
|
| And it's not just anger. If I want to express verbal
| affection towards someone and they don't want to hear it,
| we often call it abuse. But if they want me to suppress
| verbal affection towards them and I don't want to, we
| celebrate it as them having boundaries.
|
| And I think sometimes being forced to not say something
| can hurt as much as being forced to hear something, yet
| we don't seem to see how it harms people.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I mean I think it depends on how the anger surfaces to
| determine whether its abuse. Yelling and screaming and
| throwing things, absolutely. But the reason we're scared
| of anger is because we don't know how to communicate and
| express it in a healthy way.
|
| But you can also process anger solo with the right tools,
| or with a good therapist that doesn't shame anger. It
| doesn't always have to involve another person.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That depends on whether they're a legitimate object of
| your anger. If someone injures you and then ignores your
| complaints, no it's not abuse to be angry with them.
| mcphage wrote:
| David Whyte has a excellent passage about anger, from his
| book "Consolations". I'm not sure if this is an excerpt or
| the full thing (don't have the book on me to check), but in
| either case it's worth reading:
| https://www.dannabeal.com/understanding-anger-david-whyte/
| waterhouse wrote:
| The evolutionary use of anger is to disincentivize others
| from mistreating you.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| I wish my computer understood this when I get angry at it.
| Unfortunately, many (most?) times that I get angry are
| because things outside my control aren't working the way I
| feel that they should, whether they're human, animate, or
| inanimate. Or even me.
|
| Aside from academic interest, I struggle to see the
| practical benefit of this study. When I'm angry, in the
| heat of the moment, there's no way I'm going to stop and
| write an essay about my feelings. By the time I am in a
| frame of mind to do so, the anger has passed and not a
| problem anymore.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Anger ends up being destructive because we think we have to
| suppress it or neutralize it. This just increases its strength
| over time until it explodes out violently.
|
| Dunno.
|
| One are going to end up in alot of avoidable verbal and
| physical fights if ones anger is not suppressed.
|
| Just such a simple thing as the comment answer timer on HN
| helps alot.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Anger results in verbal and physical fights because it gets
| suppressed and shamed for long enough until it explodes out.
| A better route is understanding the anger and the underlying
| emotion it's protecting (often shame) before it becomes a
| problem.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yes possibly there will be more fights. Anger is a fighting
| emotion. But that doesn't mean fighting is bad either. We
| often suppress fights and conflict, especially verbal ones,
| and avoid them until they accumulate so many facets and get
| so loud that we can't ignore them and then hit each other
| with years of grievances.
|
| I think it's not only ok to verbally fight but helps us
| resolve conflict instead of avoid it.
|
| And I think if we can resolve it at the verbal level it
| doesn't have to become physical.
|
| But I think the cultural suppression of fighting/conflict is
| even deeper than the suppression of anger. A friend just
| asked for our definitions of peace and I said I currently
| believe it's a mythical concept where conflict doesn't exist.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| The very fact that you believe that anger leads to verbal and
| physical fights proves OP's point. When anger can be let out
| without the culture at large thinking of it as a threat that
| needs to be neutralized, and instead a charge that needs to
| be addressed, anger isn't harmful, it's constructive and
| instrumental.
|
| Anger normally points out a boundary that's being breached in
| which valuable things to a self - like autonomy, comfort,
| connection - are compromised. That we have so many angry
| people and that our culture encourages anger _management_
| rather than anger _processing_ points to its rejection writ
| large
| jimkleiber wrote:
| And maybe it does lead to fights when it's let out but
| little and contextually appropriate fights, and then the
| people dig deeper and gain a better understanding of their
| situations.
|
| Anger can tell people that we want them to stop doing an
| activity and sometimes people don't even know their
| behavior is breaching those boundaries. One time an ex
| visited me in a park. I juggled the soccer ball then kicked
| it to her. She rolled it back and said she didn't want to
| play. I juggled it for 15 more minutes and then kicked it
| to her again. She stood up and kicked it with me for like 5
| minutes.
|
| Three weeks later, she got angry and said "And you don't
| respect my boundaries!" And I was really confused. She
| said, "I TOLD you I didn't want to kick the ball and you
| still kicked it to me."
|
| I wished she had expressed more anger when I kicked it the
| second time. I wasn't trying to make her angry. Kicking the
| ball with her wasn't that important to me. I just didn't
| know that it bothered her that much and if I did, I
| immediately would have stopped.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| totally. Smaller conflicts are much more manageable and
| keep people in connection so much more than repressing
| it.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Exactly that, "keep people in connection." I love how you
| framed it. When we suppress the conflict, we distance
| more and more from each other and from ourselves,
| disconnecting more and more.
| suduxhdvc wrote:
| Plenty of counterexamples. Road rage is one
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think road rage is a prime example of what OP mentioned:
| anger bottling up because it repeatedly wasn't expressed and
| then it shoots out like a hose, 100% of the anger being
| directed at someone who maybe contributed 2% to the person's
| underlying anger.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Why does anger become so bad that it results in road rage?
| Because we suppress it and shame it, until it has no choice
| but to surface destructively. And then rather than try to
| understand the anger, we just double down on suppressing it
| more, which leads to ever increasing levels of explosive
| anger
| Etheryte wrote:
| I would say exactly the opposite, road rage is a classic
| example of what the parent comment means. Bottling up anger
| as if it's somehow wrong to feel angry or express it is
| exactly how you get to people blowing up in a colossal manner
| once the lid goes off. Road rage happens when someone
| overreacts to a small transgression which is exactly what you
| get with bottled up rage.
| jeremywho wrote:
| You don't think road rage can be the a manifestation of
| suppressed anger from other parts of ones life?
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Well, I'll take both fixing the symptoms ( loved one can't
| control their anger and hurts everyone around them ) and the
| syndrom ( therapy sessions to understand the cause of the anger
| ).
|
| Now, based on my experience dealing with such situations around
| me, some people have difficulties considering they should even
| talk to a therapist. They will violently reject the very idea
| they might have a problem, and will keep hurting people around
| them. Controlling anger allows having a discussion in the first
| place, which then can turn into the understanding you're
| talking about.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I strongly agree. I don't think it's only anger that we
| suppress, but rather emotions in general, especially higher
| intensity ones. I think emotions are one of the most powerful
| tools we have for communicating with each other, especially
| when we pair the physical expression with words detailing the
| deeper contexts, and yet we seem to somehow think emotional
| expression is maladaptive. It confounds me and frustrates me
| and saddens me all at the same time.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yes, strong emotions are almost always shamed. We need to
| learn to process those emotions and accept them, not suppress
| them. Suppressing never works forever, because the emotion is
| still there, and it will surface one way or another
| eventually.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| And also to express them to others. This is where I think
| it gets tricky, or has for me. I built an app for micro-
| journaling how I felt and I got really good at answering
| "How do I feel?" "What's happening?" And yet when I say
| these things to others, it can cause huge conflicts because
| they don't want us to talk about how we feel and I do. A
| suppression vs expression fight and it seems to happen with
| almost everyone I meet.
|
| So for me, I feel confident to process and accept them by
| myself, it's when I communicate them with others it can
| bring lots of conflict, and yet, if I only express them to
| myself and not to others, they don't often achieve their
| function of communication, which I think may be one of the
| core functions of emotions.
| dasudasu wrote:
| Monks of various religious dispositions, or even just secular
| meditation adepts, seem to disprove this easily.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I see it exactly opposite. A Buddhist monk would learn to
| experience, feel, observe, and detach from their anger, not
| suppress it or shame it. This is more in line what what I
| think we need to do.
|
| The more you resist the anger the more it will persist.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| There are neurological studies that show that anger cycles
| can escalate and become amplified with practice. That's not
| what we want.
|
| Acknowledge your anger, yes. Then acknowledge your control,
| not only over how you express it, but even over whether you
| feel angry or not. It is possible to develop the skill to
| _stop being angry_. This is far more important than going
| with the flow.
|
| It's often a bitter pill to swallow, because it means the
| people that act out of anger, or are always angry, are
| ultimately responsible for how they feel. It is not someone
| else's fault you feel angry.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "the skill to stop being angry"
|
| Often that amounts to changing the people or
| circumstances in one's life. That's the point of therapy.
| A good therapist wouldn't help a sexually abused child
| stay in a bad situation and just learn to suppress
| emotion. Well maybe a cbt therapist would. But a good
| therapist would try to help catalyze a change in the
| situation causing the trauma.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| The neurological studies to which you refer point to the
| neurological phenomenon, but you're mapping that to a
| single possibility for the psychological process that is
| coupled with the physical phenomenon, namely, that anger
| monotonically amplifies over time when reinforced,
| perhaps to some asymptotic steady state that's greater
| than a normative baseline
|
| An equally valid narrative is that, especially in our
| society where most people have repressed anger, once
| anger is tapped into, there's an overwhelm of backlogged
| emotion that is also released. Anger as an emotion is
| energetically expensive for a biological system, and it
| doesn't make any sense that it would continue to be
| reinforced indefinitely.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's a lot more nuanced than that. You can't just
| "control your anger". You can layer a controlling part of
| your mind on top of the anger to try to swat it down
| every time it surfaces, but this is a temporary solution.
| Especially when the anger is rooted deeply in things like
| trauma or shame.
|
| The path forward is to understand the anger with
| compassion, and the trauma or painful emotions below it,
| or the boundaries that are being crossed. Rather than
| just trying to force yourself not to feel it.
|
| It's not that different from telling a depressed person
| that they should just think positively to cure
| themselves.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Monks are doing it on easy mode. They have nothing to anger
| them, zero triggers. It's the whole point of hermeticism.
| Remove all sources of stress. Desire nothing. Of course they
| aren't angry, they have nothing; nothing to feel angry about.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| A friend of mine went to a Zen Buddhist monastery for a month
| to start practicing to deal with his anger. After the month
| he told his teacher the reason why he came - to dissipate his
| anger - and his teacher told him that he had nothing to teach
| him because the fact that he _was_ feeling his anger was the
| practice of mindfulness. The teacher told him he'd be better
| off leaving the monastery and working on the object of his
| anger (human-induced climate destabilization).
|
| I think you're appealing to the boiled down and stripped away
| "mindfulness" movement in the west that focuses on creating
| what I call "Vipassana Zombies" - people who can feel their
| sensations just enough to recognize and ignore them. A lot of
| Buddhist teachings are about empowerment and action, and
| they've been grossly misunderstood.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| I am choosing to imagine that the monk called your friend
| to take up the battle of climate justice and revolutionary
| struggle, which is indeed a very mindful way to utilize
| anger over injustice.
|
| "You will find peace in action. Join an eco-guerilla cell.
| Use your rage to guide your contribution to the cause - it
| is a valid emotion driven by a need for change. Long live
| the revolution! For Victory! For Justice! For Peace!"
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| haha not far off. He believes that we should be doing
| carbon capture by rebuilding our top soil, as that's the
| most sustainable way of pulling it down while continuing
| to feed people. He's starting a school to teach
| regenerative techniques to farmers.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| Totally agree, and I'd go further to say that the reason we
| don't want to go near anger as a society is because we don't
| know how to grieve. To tap into grief means allowing people to
| need resources like time and human attention that we've over
| leveraged into economic activity.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| My mom passed away about 15 months ago, and while I have
| worked in emotional expression for 12 years, her passing had
| me feeling the most raw. I think one main thing that happened
| with grief for me is that I felt things so intensely, the
| full spectrum, and it became really hard to not suppress
| those feelings.
|
| So I think the broader picture is not just grief, but
| feelings, especially intense feelings. If I feel sad, I want
| to cry, not work. If I feel tired, I want to sleep, not work.
| If I fall in love, I want to be with that person, not work. I
| think many if not most feelings can get in the way of our
| maximum productivity states. Maybe low level anger and focus,
| with a little bit of playfulness, can keep us productive, but
| stray too far outside of that and we don't look as
| productive.
|
| I would argue, however, that we might be more productive in
| the long-term, because otherwise we may burn out, communicate
| less effectively, and become more desensitized to what people
| need and want, both from consumers and fellow producers.
| omoikane wrote:
| > This attitude is a problem in our society
|
| Need to clarify which society is meant by "our".
|
| The authors of this paper are Japanese, and the participants
| are local university students. I would assume suppression of
| anger is the norm for most people involved in this study, since
| Japanese culture generally aims to preserve harmony.
|
| This is in contrast with some cultures that are more direct in
| their communications and perhaps not suppressing much at all.
| It's possible that they would see different results when the
| experiment is done with a more diverse group of participants.
| pompino wrote:
| If you wish to convince others of your views, you'll have to
| provide a lot more than assertions.
|
| As per the article - [..] can sometimes lead to [..]. I don't
| know how clearer the article can be, there is no proposed
| "solution" here that solves everything in every scenario. Its
| simply testing a hypothesis.
| nprateem wrote:
| I've been doing this for years. It's a twist on writing a letter
| you never send. Scribbling it out or chucking it away is an
| obvious next step.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| So many comments here focused on the writing component. So few on
| the letting go component.
| mzs wrote:
| Yup, I do this thing where I imagine myself writing down the
| thought, but not actually the contents of what I am writing,
| and then throw it in the bin, and here I actually perform the
| action. It's a little hard to do the throwing away motion when
| others are around, but I can discreetly move my hand. For
| whatever reason this work very well for me.
| rcthompson wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but they really made that title as
| unparseable as they possibly could.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Just throw it away? This looks like much more fun:
| https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/the-making-of-a-dumpster-fire/
|
| You send it an email. It prints it out, dumps the printout into a
| dumpster, and burns it in the dumpster.
|
| I don't know if it's still online though...
| kiechu wrote:
| I often write an angry comment just to not send it.
| csours wrote:
| I'll sometimes write a post or comment and then delete it. It's
| probably not as good as writing on paper, but it helps.
|
| I wonder how well it would work to have a placebo button that
| only shows on your own session
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I do this, both purposefully (on HN) and, in a manner,
| inadvertently.
|
| Writing an email and saving it as a draft gives me a memory of
| having sent the message. Occasionally I get asked about emails
| I've committed to sending, felt certain I already did, and
| subsequently found them saved as unsent drafts (inevitably
| because I got interrupted while I was writing).
| pierrebai wrote:
| I suppose it may also apply to voodoo dolls. Make an effigy, put
| pins in it, burn it for emotional release.
| drpossum wrote:
| Fine, but when I delete PR comments about my code that upset me
| it just makes my coworkers mad.
| theonething wrote:
| Am I the only to think that most PR comments are just people
| bike shedding to make themselves seem useful in code review?
| WizardClickBoy wrote:
| I not infrequently find myself prefixing my own code review
| comments with some variant of "I'm mostly asking this to make
| myself sound smart, but..." and then usually (not always) I
| delete the comment. But it's not a high proportion of my
| total review output, assuming I'm impartial enough to tell
| the difference.
|
| My point is, it definitely happens, but if it applies to
| _most_ PR comments I think the code review practices of your
| project may need improving. My experience has been that most
| code review comments are either seeking to impart or gain
| knowledge that the commenter genuinely finds useful.
| debacle wrote:
| Most modern anger is derived from helplessness. I don't get angry
| when I spill my coffee or someone cuts me off on my commute, but
| I recently discovered that I've been overcharged for my cell
| phone plan for the last 18 months and it made me seethe, mostly
| because I know that it's going to take a half dozen phone calls
| over at least as many hours to come to any real resolution, and
| that millions of people are likely in the same predicament.
|
| Writing all that down made me more, not less, angry.
| fwip wrote:
| Well, the study does say that you've got to shred it to reduce
| the anger levels.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| An exercise (whether writing or verbal) that helps me redirect
| or alleviate some of the anger is to simply ask "How do I
| imagine that person might be feeling?"
|
| The trick is, when I'm feeling angry, I don't often want to
| answer. But when I do, it can help me realize that the current
| situation may also be hurting or frustrating the people who had
| been the targets of my anger, and then maybe we can work
| together to get rid of the problem. This seems to help me when
| calling customer service, because now I'm not fighting against
| them but fighting alongside of them.
| fragmede wrote:
| Anger is only a problem when it shortcircuits logic and reason
| and makes you behave irrationally and in ways you later regret.
| But used effectively, it can give you the energy you need to
| get through all 18 of those really frustrating phone calls
| before you give up.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| "The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he
| does not convert it [his purpose] into action [...]"
|
| "Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it;
| that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the
| Enemy plants in a human soul..." - Screwtape
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| > Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it
|
| Hah, the down voters probably feel the same way about writers
| Y_Y wrote:
| Contrary to the poorly-written title, the subjects did not write
| a whole academic paper about the provocation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Are you sure? Maybe this is it
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Will it replicate? I somehow doubt it.
| oneepic wrote:
| Readers can always try this technique for themselves. It costs
| $0.
| fragmede wrote:
| yes but it'll only work for the readers that believe it'll
| work.
| throwaway74432 wrote:
| It doesn't appear that they separated those who believe it would
| work from those who didn't, to see if there was a placebo effect.
| That would have been useful.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Though not mentioned in the paper, Lincoln was famously aware of
| this technique.
|
| > "Whenever Abraham Lincoln felt the urge to tell someone off, he
| would compose what he called a "hot letter." He'd pile all of his
| anger into a note, "put it aside until his emotions cooled down,"
| Doris Kearns Goodwin once explained on NPR, "and then write [on
| the rear side of the sheet of paper]: 'Never sent. Never signed.'
| " Which meant that Gen. George G. Meade, for one, would never
| hear from his commander in chief that Lincoln blamed him for
| letting Robert E. Lee escape after Gettysburg."
|
| From: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/the-
| lost-a...
| lIl-IIIl wrote:
| According to the paper setting the letter aside did not subdue
| anger in the participants. The anger subsided in those who
| threw it away or shredded it.
| midnightmonster wrote:
| ...did not subdue anger in the participants _as much as
| throwing it away did_.
|
| Just writing it down and filing it also seemed to help, just
| not as much.
| wesleychen wrote:
| It sounds like he retained the paper rather than disposing it.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| when you're a public figure notes like this are a CYA
| gumby wrote:
| Maybe not in 1860s culture?
|
| I don't know, this is just speculation. Mainly because the
| cost of producing a duplicate letter (for ones actually
| sent, not this case) was sufficiently high that I assume
| there wasn't a culture that could make use of such
| duplicates.
| porompompero wrote:
| Doing it for decades. It works better if you burn the letter. I
| even jump over the fire. No joke.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| Have you considered flash paper? It would be difficult to jump
| over it in time, so just wondering... :)
| dotancohen wrote:
| If you are serious, I would love to ask you something that
| could possibly help me. My Gmail username is the same as my HN
| username if you don't mind.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| "Dost thou think in a moment of anger,
|
| 'tis well with thy seniors to fight?
|
| They prosper who burn in the morning
|
| the letters they wrote overnight.
|
| For some there be, shelved and forgotten,
|
| With nothing to thank for their fate,
|
| Save that (on a half-sheet of foolscap,)
|
| Which a fool 'Had the Honour to state.'"
|
| - Capt. R. A. Hopwood, Royal Navy (Retired), "The Laws of the
| Navy," 1898
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| I thought this kind of small-sample, theory-free, tell-any-story-
| you-want statistical significance mining exercise was out of
| style! This study is like an unwelcome blast from the 2010's or
| earlier!
| taylorius wrote:
| I wonder if that technique could apply more broadly.
|
| For example, if a person suffering from a bout of depression,
| were to write their depressed feelings "there is no point, no
| hope" etc.. then rip the paper up and throw it away, might it
| have any effect on their mood?
| nxobject wrote:
| Anecdotally, whenever I keep a journal through difficult times,
| my handwriting's so bad that I can't read it after a while, and
| the journal ends up being "write-only" as well. I wonder
| whether the ripping-it-up would be more cathartic.
| puppable wrote:
| I've had times where I've written those sorts of thoughts on a
| small sheet of notepad paper, which I would then tear out and
| burn in the kitchen sink. More frequently, I'll just write what
| I'm thinking into an empty, personal use chat window in lieu of
| venting to others. In either case, I think they definitely have
| some effect.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I wish my son had tried this.
| technolo-g wrote:
| Writing down "distorted thoughts" to visually recognize them as
| a bit out of whack (or not) and measure the level of distortion
| is the one of the premises of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
| (CBT).
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| I do that with reactionary tweets. I either delete them before
| posting, or sometimes shortly after. It definitely works.
| fny wrote:
| Is there a reason why so many studies (this included) fail to
| report the effect size? The way "significant" is used in
| literature, readers (even the educated ones) interpret the
| research as suggesting some groundbreaking result.
|
| Here, for example, only a 1-ish point change occurred on a six
| point scale from 3 to 2. I say 1-ish because the confidence
| intervals are rather wide and even intersect somewhat (see
| discussion.)
|
| So anger is _not_ eliminated rather you 'll be somewhat less
| angry.
| aftoprokrustes wrote:
| In my experience (10 years in academia), people who understand
| statistics enough do look at effect size rather than
| significance levels. But unfortunately, even in one of the top
| european universities, a lot of researchers (who are ~70% PhD
| candidates with only basic stats training) tend to misinterpret
| significance as meaning "large effect".
|
| There is another cause, more pernicious, which is that in the
| absence of a big effect, "a significant effect of X on Y was
| found" sells better than "no large effect was found", because
| there is a bias towards reporting positive effects in the
| litterature. In my field, it is actually usual for people to
| take big surveys, iterate dozens of statistical models with any
| kind of interactions, and only report one where some
| interesting parameters end up being significant, and derive
| policy recommendations based on this. Which is a recipe for non
| reproducible results.
| SerpentJoe wrote:
| There are at least two reasonable readings of "anger is
| eliminated", with one being true if anger is reduced at all,
| and both being true if anger is reduced to zero.
| Lerc wrote:
| I think the reason is rather simple. Funding.
|
| I feel this is one of the two basic tricks that many many
| papers do to preemptively justify their existence. The other
| being the shoehorning of the hotbutton issue of the day and
| imagining some way the study addresses that issue.
|
| It was kind of weird watching the transition from when every
| second paper could obliquely assist in the fight against AIDS
| to now when they seem to assist in the fight against climate
| change.
|
| I feel like it is a minor dishonesty committed to combat the
| unreasonable requirement for every scientific discovery to be
| immediately applicable.
| d--b wrote:
| I think this kind of tricks definitely work the first time. But
| my gut feeling is that if you do it several times the effect
| decreases as the mental image of throwing the thing in the bin
| becomes more familiar.
| tudorw wrote:
| ilinx
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Haven't read the paper but it reminds me of a popular scene in a
| Bollywood movie where the leading lady tells her acquaintance to
| physically burn the picture of his ex and flush it down the
| toilet. To which the guy says it is silly but still does it on
| insistence from the lady. After the act, he says he actually felt
| better doing what felt silly at first!
| progrus wrote:
| Also works with the drafts folder
| rlue wrote:
| Has no one noticed that there seems to be no control group in
| this study? Every participant wrote a statement that got torn to
| shreds; every participant had to write their emotions about it.
|
| It's not outside the realm of possibility that watching cartoons
| for ten minutes or just sitting in silence would produce a
| comparable reduction in anger. Really disappointing that a pair
| of career academics could get away with such an astounding
| oversight (and get published in Nature, no less).
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Based on the graphs presented in this study, it seems not
| everyone had one shredded or destroyed. Some had the letters
| retained.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Ouch, Nature publishing pop science. A few years ago my
| PhD/Academia Engineer path cousin validated if a study was
| 'real' by simply looking at the word Nature.
|
| I thought this was absurd and scrolled down to methods/data. I
| had never heard of Nature before, or rather, I had no reason to
| trust it.
|
| I find it interesting/unfortunate Academia can get away with
| being Authority based.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| If the effect you're testing is that throwing away a piece of
| paper subdues anger, then those who don't are the control
| group.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Always beware these type of Social Science studies that make for
| great popsci headlines.
|
| The kind of result that makes careers: seemingly elegant and
| simple study design, common sense hypothesis and overall great
| marketability.
|
| Diederik Stapel was one of the largest science fraudster in
| history and this kind of stuff was his bread and butter. More
| recently Francesca Gino was caught falsifying the data of the
| "honesty pledge at the top of form" that is highly similar in
| concept to this.
|
| Now for the career-ending question: Will it replicate?
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