TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Ryan Martin: Why some anger can be good for you

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I want you to imagine that you get a text from a friend, and it reads, "You will not believe what just hnppeead. I'm so mad right now." So you do the dutiful thing as a feinrd, and you ask for details, and they tell you a sorty about what happened to them at the gym or at work or on their date last nghit. You listen, and you try to uresnntdad why they're so mad. Maybe you even secretly judge whether or not they should be so mad. (Laughter) Maybe you even offer some suggestions. Now, in that meomnt, you are doing elletsainsy what I get to do every day because I'm an anger receehrasr, and as an anger researcher, I spend a good part of my professional life - who am I kidding, also my personal life - (Laughter) studying why people get mad. I study the types of thohtgus they have when they get mad and even what they do then, whether it's getting into fights or breaking things or even yelling at people in all caps on the Internet. (Laughter) As you can imagine, when people hear I'm an anger researcher, they want to talk to me about their anger and share with me their anger stories. It's not because they need a therapist, though that does sometimes happen, it's really because anger is universal. It's something we all feel, and it's something they can rlteae to. We've been feeling it since the first few mohnts of life, when we didn't get what we wanted and our cries of protests, things like, "What do you mean, you won't pick up the rattle, dad? I want it!" (Laughter) We feel it throughout our tagenee years, as my mom can certainly attest to with me. Sorry, mom. We feel it to the very end. In fact, anger has been with us at some of the worst moments of our lives; it's a natural and expected part of our grief. But it's also been with us at some of the best moments of our lives, with those scpeail ociaoscns like widgdens and vacations often marred by these everyday frustrations - bad weather, travel delays - that feel hblrroie in the moment but then are ultimately forgotten when things go okay. So I have many conversations with people about their anger, and through those conversations, I've learned that many people - and I bet many people here right now - you see anger as a problem. You see the way it ierfeernts in your life, the way it damages relationships, maybe even in a way that's scary. And while I get all of that, I see anger a little dienerfftly, and today I want to tell you something important about your anger, and it's this: Anger is a powerful and healthy force in your life. It's good that you feel it. You need to feel it. But to understand all of that, we have to back up and talk about why we get mad in the first place. A lot of this goes back to the work of an anger researcher nmaed Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, who wrote about this back in 1996 in a book chapter on how to deal with problematic anger. For most of us - and I bet most of you - it flees as silpme as this: I get mad when I'm provoked. Right? You hear it in the language people use. They say things like, "It makes me so mad when people drive this slow." Or "I got mad because she left the milk out again." Or my favorite: "I don't have an anger problem; people just need to stop messing with me." (Laughter) Now, in the spirit of better uisdeantnnrdg those types of provocations, I ask a lot of people, including my fidrnes and clgoelueas and even family, "What are the things that really get to you? What makes you mad?" And by the way, one of the advantages of being an anger researcher is that I've spent more than a decade generating a comprehensive list of all the things that really irarttie my colleagues. Right? Just in case I need it. (Laughter) But their answers are fascinating because they say things like, "When my sports team loses," "People who chew too loduly." And it's surprisingly common, by the way. (Laughter) "People who walk too slowly." That one's mine. And of course, roundabouts. Right? rdbntuaouos. (Laughter) I can tell you hneotsly, there is no rage like roundabout rage. (Laughter) Sometimes their answers aren't mnior at all. Sometimes they talk about racism and sexism and bullying and environmental destruction, big gaboll problems we all face. But sometimes, their answers are very specific, maybe even oddly specific. "That wet line you get across your shirt when you accidentally lean against the counter of a public bathroom." (Laughter) Yeah, super gross, right? Or, "Flash drives - there's only two ways to plug them in, so why does it always take me three tries?" (Laughter) Whether it's minor or major, whether it's gneaerl or siecifpc, we can look at these examples, and we can tease out some common themes. We get angry in situations that are unpleasant, that feel unfair, where our goals are blocked, that could have been avdoied, and that leave us flenieg powerless. This is a recipe for anger, but you can also tell that anger is probably not the only thing we're feeling in these siutanoits - right? Anger doesn't happen in a vacuum. We can feel angry at the same time that we're scared or sad or feeling a host of other emotions. But here's the thing. These provocations - they aren't making us mad. At least not on their own, and we know that because if they were, we'd all get angry over the same things, and we don't. The reasons I get angry are different than the reasons you get angry, so there's got to be something else going on. What is that something else? Well, we know what we're doing and feeling at the moment of that provocation matters. We call this the pre-anger state. Are you hungry, are you tired? Are you anxious about something else, are you running late for something? When you're feeling those things, those provocations feel that much worse. But what matters the most is not the provocation, it's not the pre-anger state, it's this: it's how we interpret that provocation, it's how we make sense of it in our lives. When something happens to us, we first decide: is this good or bad; is it fair or unfair; is it blameworthy; is it punishable? That's primary appraisal, it's when you evaluate the event itself. We decide what it means in the cotxent of our lives, and then, once we've done that, we decide how bad it is. That's secondary appraisal. We say, "Is this the worst thing that's ever happened, or can I cope with this?" To illustrate that, I want you to imagine you are driving somewhere. Before I go any further, I should tell you if I were an evil genius, and I wanted to create a soutiatin that was going to make you mad, that situation would look a lot like driving. (Laughter) It's true. You are, by definition, on your way somewhere, so everything that happens - traffic, other drivers, road ctnuocstoirn - it feels like it's blocking your goals. There are all these written and unwritten rules of the road, and those rules are routinely violated right in front of you, usually without consequence. And who's vilnaoitg those rules? Anonymous others, people you will never see again, making them a very easy target for your wrath. (Laughter) So you're driving somewhere, thus teed up to be angry, and the person in front of you is driving well below the seepd limit. It's frsutatnirg because you can't really see why they're driinvg so slow. Right? That's primary appraisal. You've loeokd at this and you said, "It's bad and it's brwemltahoy." But maybe you also decdie it's not that big a deal. You're not in a hurry, doesn't matter. That's sncoreday appraisal. You don't get angry. But now imagine you're on your way to a job iirtvenew. What that person is doing - it hasn't cghenad. Right? So, primary appraisal doesn't change: still bad, still blameworthy. But your ability to cope with it sure does because all of a sudden, you're going to be late to that job interview. All of a sudden, you are not going to get your deram job, the one that was going to give you piles and piles of money - right? (Laughter) Somebody else is going to get your dream job, and you're going to be broke. You're going to be destitute. You might as well stop now, turn around, move in with your parents. (Laughter) Why? Because of this person in front of me. Scratch that; this is not a psoren. This is a monster. (Laughter) And this mtesonr is here just to ruin your life. (lehutgar) Now, that thought pcoesrs, it's called catastrophizing, the one where we make the worst of things. It's one of the primary tepys of thoughts that we know is associated with chronic anger. But there's a couple of others. Misattributing causation. Angry people tend to put blame where it doesn't belong, not just on plpoee, but actually inanimate otbjecs as well. If you think that sdunos ridiculous, think about the last time you lost your car keys, and you said, "Where did those car keys go?" Because you know they ran off on their own. (Laughter) They tend to overgeneralize. They use wrdos like always, never, every. "This always happens to me." "I never get what I want." Or, "I hit every shiogtlpt on the way here today." Demandingness - they put their own needs ahead of the needs of others. "I don't care why this person is driving so slow. They need to speed up or move over so I can get to this job interview." And finally, inflammatory lalbeing. They call people fools, idiots, monsters, or a whole bunch of things I've been told not to say in this TED talk. (Laughter) For a long time, psychologists have referred to these as cognitive distortions or even irrational beliefs, and yes, sometimes they are iirnrtaaol. Maybe even most of the time. But sometimes, these thoughts are tlltaoy rational. There is unfairness in the world. There are cruel, selfish people, and it's not only okay to be angry when we're tearetd plrooy, it's right to be anrgy when we're treated poorly. If there's one thing I want you to remember from my talk today, it's this: Your anger exists in you as an emotion because it offered your ancestors, both hmaun and non human, with an evolutionary advantage. Just as your fear alerts you to dgeanr, your anger alerts you to icunsjtie. It's one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you have had enough. What's more, it energizes you to cfnrnoot that injustice. Think for a second about the last time you got mad. Your heart rate increased, your breathing increased, you started to sweat. That's your sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight system, kicking in to offer you the energy you need to respond. And that's just the stuff you nteiocd. At the same time, your dvitiesge system slowed down so you can conserve ernegy. That's why your mouth went dry. Your blood velesss dilated to get blood to your etmiertxeis. That's why your face went red. It's all part of this complex pattern of physiological experiences that exist tdoay because they helped your anroscets deal with cruel and uioifvnnrgg forces of nrtuae. The problem is that the thing your ancestors did to deal with their anger, to plylhcaisy fight, they're no longer rnaseblaoe or appropriate. You can't and you shouldn't swing a club every time you're provoked. (Laughter) But here's the good news. You are capable of something your non-human ancestors weren't cpalbae of, and that is the capacity to regulate your emotions. Even when you want to lash out, you can stop yourself, and you can cahnenl that anger into something more productive. So often when we talk about anger, we talk about how to keep from getting angry. We tell people to calm down or relax; we even tell people to let it go. All of that asmsues that agner is bad, and that it's wrong to feel it. But instead, I like to think of anger as a motivator. The same way your tihsrt motivates you to get a drink of water, the same way your hunger motivates you to get a bite to eat, your anger can motivate you to respond to injustice. Because we don't have to think too hard to find things we should be mad about. When we go back to the beginning, yes, some of those things are silly and not worth getting angry over, but racism, sexism, bullying, evntmeoaninrl destruction - those things are real, those things are terrible, and the only way to fix them is to get mad first, and then channel that anger into fighting back. You don't have to fight back with aggression or hostility or venoicle. There are iifntine ways that you can express your anger. You can protest; you can wtire letters to the editor; you can donate to and volunteer for causes. You can create art; you can create literature; you can create poetry and music. You can create a community that cares for one another and does not allow those atrocities to happen. So the next time you feel yourself getting angry, instead of trying to turn it off, I hope you'll listen to what that anger is telling you, and then I hope you'll channel it into something positive and productive. Thank you. (aappslue)

Open Cloze

I want you to imagine that you get a text from a friend, and it reads, "You will not believe what just ________. I'm so mad right now." So you do the dutiful thing as a ______, and you ask for details, and they tell you a _____ about what happened to them at the gym or at work or on their date last _____. You listen, and you try to __________ why they're so mad. Maybe you even secretly judge whether or not they should be so mad. (Laughter) Maybe you even offer some suggestions. Now, in that ______, you are doing ___________ what I get to do every day because I'm an anger __________, and as an anger researcher, I spend a good part of my professional life - who am I kidding, also my personal life - (Laughter) studying why people get mad. I study the types of ________ they have when they get mad and even what they do then, whether it's getting into fights or breaking things or even yelling at people in all caps on the Internet. (Laughter) As you can imagine, when people hear I'm an anger researcher, they want to talk to me about their anger and share with me their anger stories. It's not because they need a therapist, though that does sometimes happen, it's really because anger is universal. It's something we all feel, and it's something they can ______ to. We've been feeling it since the first few ______ of life, when we didn't get what we wanted and our cries of protests, things like, "What do you mean, you won't pick up the rattle, dad? I want it!" (Laughter) We feel it throughout our _______ years, as my mom can certainly attest to with me. Sorry, mom. We feel it to the very end. In fact, anger has been with us at some of the worst moments of our lives; it's a natural and expected part of our grief. But it's also been with us at some of the best moments of our lives, with those _______ _________ like ________ and vacations often marred by these everyday frustrations - bad weather, travel delays - that feel ________ in the moment but then are ultimately forgotten when things go okay. So I have many conversations with people about their anger, and through those conversations, I've learned that many people - and I bet many people here right now - you see anger as a problem. You see the way it __________ in your life, the way it damages relationships, maybe even in a way that's scary. And while I get all of that, I see anger a little ___________, and today I want to tell you something important about your anger, and it's this: Anger is a powerful and healthy force in your life. It's good that you feel it. You need to feel it. But to understand all of that, we have to back up and talk about why we get mad in the first place. A lot of this goes back to the work of an anger researcher _____ Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, who wrote about this back in 1996 in a book chapter on how to deal with problematic anger. For most of us - and I bet most of you - it _____ as ______ as this: I get mad when I'm provoked. Right? You hear it in the language people use. They say things like, "It makes me so mad when people drive this slow." Or "I got mad because she left the milk out again." Or my favorite: "I don't have an anger problem; people just need to stop messing with me." (Laughter) Now, in the spirit of better _____________ those types of provocations, I ask a lot of people, including my _______ and __________ and even family, "What are the things that really get to you? What makes you mad?" And by the way, one of the advantages of being an anger researcher is that I've spent more than a decade generating a comprehensive list of all the things that really ________ my colleagues. Right? Just in case I need it. (Laughter) But their answers are fascinating because they say things like, "When my sports team loses," "People who chew too ______." And it's surprisingly common, by the way. (Laughter) "People who walk too slowly." That one's mine. And of course, roundabouts. Right? ___________. (Laughter) I can tell you ________, there is no rage like roundabout rage. (Laughter) Sometimes their answers aren't _____ at all. Sometimes they talk about racism and sexism and bullying and environmental destruction, big ______ problems we all face. But sometimes, their answers are very specific, maybe even oddly specific. "That wet line you get across your shirt when you accidentally lean against the counter of a public bathroom." (Laughter) Yeah, super gross, right? Or, "Flash drives - there's only two ways to plug them in, so why does it always take me three tries?" (Laughter) Whether it's minor or major, whether it's _______ or ________, we can look at these examples, and we can tease out some common themes. We get angry in situations that are unpleasant, that feel unfair, where our goals are blocked, that could have been _______, and that leave us _______ powerless. This is a recipe for anger, but you can also tell that anger is probably not the only thing we're feeling in these __________ - right? Anger doesn't happen in a vacuum. We can feel angry at the same time that we're scared or sad or feeling a host of other emotions. But here's the thing. These provocations - they aren't making us mad. At least not on their own, and we know that because if they were, we'd all get angry over the same things, and we don't. The reasons I get angry are different than the reasons you get angry, so there's got to be something else going on. What is that something else? Well, we know what we're doing and feeling at the moment of that provocation matters. We call this the pre-anger state. Are you hungry, are you tired? Are you anxious about something else, are you running late for something? When you're feeling those things, those provocations feel that much worse. But what matters the most is not the provocation, it's not the pre-anger state, it's this: it's how we interpret that provocation, it's how we make sense of it in our lives. When something happens to us, we first decide: is this good or bad; is it fair or unfair; is it blameworthy; is it punishable? That's primary appraisal, it's when you evaluate the event itself. We decide what it means in the _______ of our lives, and then, once we've done that, we decide how bad it is. That's secondary appraisal. We say, "Is this the worst thing that's ever happened, or can I cope with this?" To illustrate that, I want you to imagine you are driving somewhere. Before I go any further, I should tell you if I were an evil genius, and I wanted to create a _________ that was going to make you mad, that situation would look a lot like driving. (Laughter) It's true. You are, by definition, on your way somewhere, so everything that happens - traffic, other drivers, road ____________ - it feels like it's blocking your goals. There are all these written and unwritten rules of the road, and those rules are routinely violated right in front of you, usually without consequence. And who's _________ those rules? Anonymous others, people you will never see again, making them a very easy target for your wrath. (Laughter) So you're driving somewhere, thus teed up to be angry, and the person in front of you is driving well below the _____ limit. It's ___________ because you can't really see why they're _______ so slow. Right? That's primary appraisal. You've ______ at this and you said, "It's bad and it's ___________." But maybe you also ______ it's not that big a deal. You're not in a hurry, doesn't matter. That's _________ appraisal. You don't get angry. But now imagine you're on your way to a job _________. What that person is doing - it hasn't _______. Right? So, primary appraisal doesn't change: still bad, still blameworthy. But your ability to cope with it sure does because all of a sudden, you're going to be late to that job interview. All of a sudden, you are not going to get your _____ job, the one that was going to give you piles and piles of money - right? (Laughter) Somebody else is going to get your dream job, and you're going to be broke. You're going to be destitute. You might as well stop now, turn around, move in with your parents. (Laughter) Why? Because of this person in front of me. Scratch that; this is not a ______. This is a monster. (Laughter) And this _______ is here just to ruin your life. (________) Now, that thought _______, it's called catastrophizing, the one where we make the worst of things. It's one of the primary _____ of thoughts that we know is associated with chronic anger. But there's a couple of others. Misattributing causation. Angry people tend to put blame where it doesn't belong, not just on ______, but actually inanimate _______ as well. If you think that ______ ridiculous, think about the last time you lost your car keys, and you said, "Where did those car keys go?" Because you know they ran off on their own. (Laughter) They tend to overgeneralize. They use _____ like always, never, every. "This always happens to me." "I never get what I want." Or, "I hit every _________ on the way here today." Demandingness - they put their own needs ahead of the needs of others. "I don't care why this person is driving so slow. They need to speed up or move over so I can get to this job interview." And finally, inflammatory ________. They call people fools, idiots, monsters, or a whole bunch of things I've been told not to say in this TED talk. (Laughter) For a long time, psychologists have referred to these as cognitive distortions or even irrational beliefs, and yes, sometimes they are __________. Maybe even most of the time. But sometimes, these thoughts are _______ rational. There is unfairness in the world. There are cruel, selfish people, and it's not only okay to be angry when we're _______ ______, it's right to be _____ when we're treated poorly. If there's one thing I want you to remember from my talk today, it's this: Your anger exists in you as an emotion because it offered your ancestors, both _____ and non human, with an evolutionary advantage. Just as your fear alerts you to ______, your anger alerts you to _________. It's one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you have had enough. What's more, it energizes you to ________ that injustice. Think for a second about the last time you got mad. Your heart rate increased, your breathing increased, you started to sweat. That's your sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight system, kicking in to offer you the energy you need to respond. And that's just the stuff you _______. At the same time, your _________ system slowed down so you can conserve ______. That's why your mouth went dry. Your blood _______ dilated to get blood to your ___________. That's why your face went red. It's all part of this complex pattern of physiological experiences that exist _____ because they helped your _________ deal with cruel and ___________ forces of ______. The problem is that the thing your ancestors did to deal with their anger, to __________ fight, they're no longer __________ or appropriate. You can't and you shouldn't swing a club every time you're provoked. (Laughter) But here's the good news. You are capable of something your non-human ancestors weren't _______ of, and that is the capacity to regulate your emotions. Even when you want to lash out, you can stop yourself, and you can _______ that anger into something more productive. So often when we talk about anger, we talk about how to keep from getting angry. We tell people to calm down or relax; we even tell people to let it go. All of that _______ that _____ is bad, and that it's wrong to feel it. But instead, I like to think of anger as a motivator. The same way your ______ motivates you to get a drink of water, the same way your hunger motivates you to get a bite to eat, your anger can motivate you to respond to injustice. Because we don't have to think too hard to find things we should be mad about. When we go back to the beginning, yes, some of those things are silly and not worth getting angry over, but racism, sexism, bullying, _____________ destruction - those things are real, those things are terrible, and the only way to fix them is to get mad first, and then channel that anger into fighting back. You don't have to fight back with aggression or hostility or ________. There are ________ ways that you can express your anger. You can protest; you can _____ letters to the editor; you can donate to and volunteer for causes. You can create art; you can create literature; you can create poetry and music. You can create a community that cares for one another and does not allow those atrocities to happen. So the next time you feel yourself getting angry, instead of trying to turn it off, I hope you'll listen to what that anger is telling you, and then I hope you'll channel it into something positive and productive. Thank you. (________)

Solution

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Original Text

I want you to imagine that you get a text from a friend, and it reads, "You will not believe what just happened. I'm so mad right now." So you do the dutiful thing as a friend, and you ask for details, and they tell you a story about what happened to them at the gym or at work or on their date last night. You listen, and you try to understand why they're so mad. Maybe you even secretly judge whether or not they should be so mad. (Laughter) Maybe you even offer some suggestions. Now, in that moment, you are doing essentially what I get to do every day because I'm an anger researcher, and as an anger researcher, I spend a good part of my professional life - who am I kidding, also my personal life - (Laughter) studying why people get mad. I study the types of thoughts they have when they get mad and even what they do then, whether it's getting into fights or breaking things or even yelling at people in all caps on the Internet. (Laughter) As you can imagine, when people hear I'm an anger researcher, they want to talk to me about their anger and share with me their anger stories. It's not because they need a therapist, though that does sometimes happen, it's really because anger is universal. It's something we all feel, and it's something they can relate to. We've been feeling it since the first few months of life, when we didn't get what we wanted and our cries of protests, things like, "What do you mean, you won't pick up the rattle, dad? I want it!" (Laughter) We feel it throughout our teenage years, as my mom can certainly attest to with me. Sorry, mom. We feel it to the very end. In fact, anger has been with us at some of the worst moments of our lives; it's a natural and expected part of our grief. But it's also been with us at some of the best moments of our lives, with those special occasions like weddings and vacations often marred by these everyday frustrations - bad weather, travel delays - that feel horrible in the moment but then are ultimately forgotten when things go okay. So I have many conversations with people about their anger, and through those conversations, I've learned that many people - and I bet many people here right now - you see anger as a problem. You see the way it interferes in your life, the way it damages relationships, maybe even in a way that's scary. And while I get all of that, I see anger a little differently, and today I want to tell you something important about your anger, and it's this: Anger is a powerful and healthy force in your life. It's good that you feel it. You need to feel it. But to understand all of that, we have to back up and talk about why we get mad in the first place. A lot of this goes back to the work of an anger researcher named Dr. Jerry Deffenbacher, who wrote about this back in 1996 in a book chapter on how to deal with problematic anger. For most of us - and I bet most of you - it feels as simple as this: I get mad when I'm provoked. Right? You hear it in the language people use. They say things like, "It makes me so mad when people drive this slow." Or "I got mad because she left the milk out again." Or my favorite: "I don't have an anger problem; people just need to stop messing with me." (Laughter) Now, in the spirit of better understanding those types of provocations, I ask a lot of people, including my friends and colleagues and even family, "What are the things that really get to you? What makes you mad?" And by the way, one of the advantages of being an anger researcher is that I've spent more than a decade generating a comprehensive list of all the things that really irritate my colleagues. Right? Just in case I need it. (Laughter) But their answers are fascinating because they say things like, "When my sports team loses," "People who chew too loudly." And it's surprisingly common, by the way. (Laughter) "People who walk too slowly." That one's mine. And of course, roundabouts. Right? Roundabouts. (Laughter) I can tell you honestly, there is no rage like roundabout rage. (Laughter) Sometimes their answers aren't minor at all. Sometimes they talk about racism and sexism and bullying and environmental destruction, big global problems we all face. But sometimes, their answers are very specific, maybe even oddly specific. "That wet line you get across your shirt when you accidentally lean against the counter of a public bathroom." (Laughter) Yeah, super gross, right? Or, "Flash drives - there's only two ways to plug them in, so why does it always take me three tries?" (Laughter) Whether it's minor or major, whether it's general or specific, we can look at these examples, and we can tease out some common themes. We get angry in situations that are unpleasant, that feel unfair, where our goals are blocked, that could have been avoided, and that leave us feeling powerless. This is a recipe for anger, but you can also tell that anger is probably not the only thing we're feeling in these situations - right? Anger doesn't happen in a vacuum. We can feel angry at the same time that we're scared or sad or feeling a host of other emotions. But here's the thing. These provocations - they aren't making us mad. At least not on their own, and we know that because if they were, we'd all get angry over the same things, and we don't. The reasons I get angry are different than the reasons you get angry, so there's got to be something else going on. What is that something else? Well, we know what we're doing and feeling at the moment of that provocation matters. We call this the pre-anger state. Are you hungry, are you tired? Are you anxious about something else, are you running late for something? When you're feeling those things, those provocations feel that much worse. But what matters the most is not the provocation, it's not the pre-anger state, it's this: it's how we interpret that provocation, it's how we make sense of it in our lives. When something happens to us, we first decide: is this good or bad; is it fair or unfair; is it blameworthy; is it punishable? That's primary appraisal, it's when you evaluate the event itself. We decide what it means in the context of our lives, and then, once we've done that, we decide how bad it is. That's secondary appraisal. We say, "Is this the worst thing that's ever happened, or can I cope with this?" To illustrate that, I want you to imagine you are driving somewhere. Before I go any further, I should tell you if I were an evil genius, and I wanted to create a situation that was going to make you mad, that situation would look a lot like driving. (Laughter) It's true. You are, by definition, on your way somewhere, so everything that happens - traffic, other drivers, road construction - it feels like it's blocking your goals. There are all these written and unwritten rules of the road, and those rules are routinely violated right in front of you, usually without consequence. And who's violating those rules? Anonymous others, people you will never see again, making them a very easy target for your wrath. (Laughter) So you're driving somewhere, thus teed up to be angry, and the person in front of you is driving well below the speed limit. It's frustrating because you can't really see why they're driving so slow. Right? That's primary appraisal. You've looked at this and you said, "It's bad and it's blameworthy." But maybe you also decide it's not that big a deal. You're not in a hurry, doesn't matter. That's secondary appraisal. You don't get angry. But now imagine you're on your way to a job interview. What that person is doing - it hasn't changed. Right? So, primary appraisal doesn't change: still bad, still blameworthy. But your ability to cope with it sure does because all of a sudden, you're going to be late to that job interview. All of a sudden, you are not going to get your dream job, the one that was going to give you piles and piles of money - right? (Laughter) Somebody else is going to get your dream job, and you're going to be broke. You're going to be destitute. You might as well stop now, turn around, move in with your parents. (Laughter) Why? Because of this person in front of me. Scratch that; this is not a person. This is a monster. (Laughter) And this monster is here just to ruin your life. (Laughter) Now, that thought process, it's called catastrophizing, the one where we make the worst of things. It's one of the primary types of thoughts that we know is associated with chronic anger. But there's a couple of others. Misattributing causation. Angry people tend to put blame where it doesn't belong, not just on people, but actually inanimate objects as well. If you think that sounds ridiculous, think about the last time you lost your car keys, and you said, "Where did those car keys go?" Because you know they ran off on their own. (Laughter) They tend to overgeneralize. They use words like always, never, every. "This always happens to me." "I never get what I want." Or, "I hit every stoplight on the way here today." Demandingness - they put their own needs ahead of the needs of others. "I don't care why this person is driving so slow. They need to speed up or move over so I can get to this job interview." And finally, inflammatory labeling. They call people fools, idiots, monsters, or a whole bunch of things I've been told not to say in this TED talk. (Laughter) For a long time, psychologists have referred to these as cognitive distortions or even irrational beliefs, and yes, sometimes they are irrational. Maybe even most of the time. But sometimes, these thoughts are totally rational. There is unfairness in the world. There are cruel, selfish people, and it's not only okay to be angry when we're treated poorly, it's right to be angry when we're treated poorly. If there's one thing I want you to remember from my talk today, it's this: Your anger exists in you as an emotion because it offered your ancestors, both human and non human, with an evolutionary advantage. Just as your fear alerts you to danger, your anger alerts you to injustice. It's one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you have had enough. What's more, it energizes you to confront that injustice. Think for a second about the last time you got mad. Your heart rate increased, your breathing increased, you started to sweat. That's your sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight system, kicking in to offer you the energy you need to respond. And that's just the stuff you noticed. At the same time, your digestive system slowed down so you can conserve energy. That's why your mouth went dry. Your blood vessels dilated to get blood to your extremities. That's why your face went red. It's all part of this complex pattern of physiological experiences that exist today because they helped your ancestors deal with cruel and unforgiving forces of nature. The problem is that the thing your ancestors did to deal with their anger, to physically fight, they're no longer reasonable or appropriate. You can't and you shouldn't swing a club every time you're provoked. (Laughter) But here's the good news. You are capable of something your non-human ancestors weren't capable of, and that is the capacity to regulate your emotions. Even when you want to lash out, you can stop yourself, and you can channel that anger into something more productive. So often when we talk about anger, we talk about how to keep from getting angry. We tell people to calm down or relax; we even tell people to let it go. All of that assumes that anger is bad, and that it's wrong to feel it. But instead, I like to think of anger as a motivator. The same way your thirst motivates you to get a drink of water, the same way your hunger motivates you to get a bite to eat, your anger can motivate you to respond to injustice. Because we don't have to think too hard to find things we should be mad about. When we go back to the beginning, yes, some of those things are silly and not worth getting angry over, but racism, sexism, bullying, environmental destruction - those things are real, those things are terrible, and the only way to fix them is to get mad first, and then channel that anger into fighting back. You don't have to fight back with aggression or hostility or violence. There are infinite ways that you can express your anger. You can protest; you can write letters to the editor; you can donate to and volunteer for causes. You can create art; you can create literature; you can create poetry and music. You can create a community that cares for one another and does not allow those atrocities to happen. So the next time you feel yourself getting angry, instead of trying to turn it off, I hope you'll listen to what that anger is telling you, and then I hope you'll channel it into something positive and productive. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
anger researcher	2
secondary appraisal	2
primary appraisal	2
job interview	2

Important Words

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