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Anger in Relationships

The term anger refers to a powerful human emotion, elicited when individuals perceive that their needs, desires, or goals have been thwarted or obstructed by others. Given that friends and family members have the greatest capacity to thwart personal desires and goals, it is not surprising that researchers have found anger to be one of the most frequently experienced relationship emotions. It should be noted, though, that anger is not necessarily a negative or harmful emotion. Rather, anger is an innate, evolved psychological mechanism that serves an important survival function: Specifically, it alerts individuals to the fact that their goals have been obstructed and motivates them to attack the perceived source of the obstruction. Even so, although the experience of anger may be energizing and have potentially functional outcomes, angry individuals may also behave in aggressive and dysfunctional ways that exacerbate rather than resolve their relationship problems. These features and functions of anger in relationships are discussed in more detail in this entry.

Causes of Anger in Relationships

The first major survey of laypeople's experiences of anger was published by James Averill in the 1980s. Averill found that anger was a profoundly interpersonal emotion, experienced most often within relationship contexts and elicited by perceptions that others were behaving badly or in ways that violated important interpersonal rules and standards. Since the 1980s, a number of empirical studies have confirmed that almost any event or stimulus can elicit anger in relationships depending on how this event is appraised or interpreted by an individual. Specifically, to the extent that a stimulus (such as a partner's unwillingness to share household chores) is appraised as unwanted, undeserved, and “not right” (typically expressed as “unfair”), then an individual is likely to experience anger in response to that stimulus. Further, to the extent that the stimulus is appraised as intentional (i.e., one believes one's partner is being deliberately lazy) and controllable (i.e., one's partner is not physically disabled and knows how to operate a vacuum cleaner), then an individual's anger may be intense.

Other kinds of cognitive appraisals may moderate the experience of anger. For example, when the kinds of anger-eliciting appraisals described above are coupled with perceptions of powerlessness (i.e., one's partner clearly has no intention of ever doing household chores), one may experience what Attachment Theorist John Bowlby referred to as a futile “anger of despair,” as opposed to the potentially functional “anger of hope.” Further, researchers have found that appraisals of powerlessness in anger-eliciting situations may be associated with feelings of hatred for the offending partner, whereas appraisals of actual and/or moral superiority may be associated with contempt. Overall, however, the key cognitions associated with anger concern perceived “wrongness” or injustice and other-blame. Little wonder, then, that some have referred to anger as the judicial emotion.

Motivational and Behavioral Features of Anger

Along with judgmental cognitions, anger is associated with powerful urges, or impulses to action. Physiologically, anger prepares the body for removing obstacles and winning battles. The angry individual's heart rate and blood pressure rise, and he or she feels energized, focused, strong, and, importantly, right. Accordingly, researchers have found that a key defining feature of anger in relationship contexts is a desire to confront or engage with offending partners and make them see the error of their ways. Anger is also associated with powerful urges to punish offenders and/or to take revenge on them. Such desires may manifest in verbal and nonverbal displays of intimidating behaviors such as shouting, stamping, throwing objects, or displaying physical aggression and violence. Some individuals also express anger by ignoring, ostracizing, or attempting to inflict emotional pain on offending partners. Importantly, however, angry impulses are not always acted upon, particularly when such impulses are aggressive or destructive. Indeed, researchers have found that people typically report trying to control the expression of anger in close relationships, though there are some important gender differences in the ways in which men and women express and regulate anger.

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