Emotional Activity And Anger Rumination example essay topic

Anger is a basic emotion (Oakley, 1992) that can be defined as a negative feeling state associated with specific cognitive appraisals, physiological changes and action tendencies (Kassinove & Sukhodolsky, 1995). It has been distinguished from related concepts of hostility and aggression (Friedman and Spielberger) and a substantial body of literature has been accumulated which necessitates a distinction between anger and anger rumination. Conceptualization of the anger rumination was influenced by the social-constructivist (Averill, 1983) and factor-analytical (Spielberger, 1988) models of anger. Anger rumination is considered as a relatively independent component within the sequence of broader anger phenomenology.

Generally, if anger is viewed as an emotion, anger rumination can be defined as thinking about this emotion. The Anger Rumination Scale (ARS) was developed to assess cognitive processes that unfold after the emotion of anger has been triggered or generated. Deffenbacher (1999) explicated the difference between internal and external triggers of anger. External anger eliciting events include identifiable circumstances such as being cut off in traffic. Internal events that may trigger anger include thoughts and memories of prior anger-provoking events such as thinking about an ex-spouse. Anger experiences are further shaped by cognitive appraisals, specifically those of unfairness, blameworthiness, and intentionality (Kassinove & Sukhodolsky, 1995).

Spielberger (1988) labeled the phenomenology of anger experience as state-anger, which was defined as a transient psychobiological feeling that varies in intensity from mild irritation to fury and involves the concomitant activation of the autonomic nervous system. Correspondingly, an individual's tendency to experience state-anger with higher frequency and in response to a wider range of situations is referred to as trait-anger. We propose that anger generation and anger experience processes are intertwined with anger ruminative processes, which can be responsible for sustaining and augmenting anger. This paper is concerned with anger rumination, unintentional and recurrent cognitive processes that emerge during and continue after an episode of anger experience. In addition to anger literature, research on ruminative thoughts (Martin and Tesser, 1996 and Trapnell), self-focused attention (Ingram, 1990), emotion regulation (Gross, 1998), and counterfactual thinking (Roese, 1997) was reviewed during the stage of construct clarification (DeV ellis, 1991).

As a result, the construct of anger rumination was theoretically derived to include three different processes: memories of past anger experiences, attention to immediate anger experiences, and counterfactual thoughts about anger experience. To illustrate these dimensions, consider an inner monologue that might unfold in a person's head after being stood up by a date. The person might be thinking: "I can not believe I got stood up by this I am really mad now (i.e. attention to current experience). This is just the kind of thing my ex used to do (i.e. memories of similar anger provoking episodes).

I could have been home watching television instead of waiting out here (i. e., counterfactual thinking)". Subsequently, it is suggested that memories of past anger episodes can trigger new episodes of state-anger, attention to anger experience can lead to amplification of its intensity and duration, and counterfactual thoughts may be related to action tendencies towards resolution or retaliation. Based on subjective reports, anger is a frequently experienced and an easily identifiable emotion. On average, anger is experienced several times a week and typically lasts for half an hour (Averill and Kassinove). The relationship of anger to elevated blood pressure (S uls, Wan & Costa, 1995), social maladjustment (Defenbacher, 1992), and aggressive behavior (Berkowitz, 1993) demonstrates the clinical utility of anger research. While anger has been connected to clearly detrimental outcomes, ruminative thoughts do not easily present with the obvious negative implications of the same caliber.

However, ruminative thoughts were named as major contributors to unhappiness (McIntosh & Martin, 1992), depression (e.g. Beck, 1982), and the ability to solve problems (Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989). Clearly, reoccurring thoughts of anger episodes would negatively contribute to subjective well-being and, therefore, merit investigation. A plethora of anger measures is available in research literature. A recent review counted 63 published measurement instruments (Miller, Smith, Turner, Guijarro & Halle t, 1996). The present conceptualization of anger rumination suggests that it is related to the duration of anger experience as well as to the tendency to dwell on one's anger experiences. The duration dimension of an anger episode has been relatively neglected in psychometric ally developed anger scales.

The Multidimensional Anger Inventory (Siegel, 1986) assesses duration of anger with two items which clustered together with the frequency and intensity of anger items, to form an anger arousal factor. The construct of anger rumination distinguishes the duration of the physiological arousal during the state-anger experience from the duration of cognitive activity related to a particular anger episode. After the initial provocation, an individual's attention and thinking can be continuously focused on, or will intermittently return to, the anger provoking event. This tendency to ruminate about the experience may be the mechanism partially responsible for the maintenance of anger. At first sight, anger rumination appears to resemble the construct of suppressed anger. In the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAX I), Spielberger (1988) distinguished between the three modes of anger expression: anger-out, anger-in and anger-control.

Anger-out refers to a tendency to express anger through either verbal or physical behaviors. Anger-in or suppressed anger refers to the tendency to hold one's anger on the inside without any outlet. Anger-control refers to the tendency to engage in behaviors intended to reduce overt anger expression. The construct of anger rumination attempts to illuminate what happens to anger after it has been suppressed. Thus, the suppression of anger (anger-in mode of anger expression) might provide the material for subsequent rumination. In addition, although it may be difficult to tease cognition and emotion apart, anger-in can be viewed as an emotional activity and anger rumination can be considered a cognitive activity.

A large scale, factor-analytical investigation on a sample of 2682 participants provided support for the independence and possibly complex structure of the anger rumination factor (Miller, Jenkins, Kaplan & Salon en, 1995). The data from Siegel's (1986) multidimensional anger inventory, Spielberger's, Johnson, Russell, Crane, Jacobs and Warden's (1985) anger expression scales, a Cook-Medley (Cook & Medley, 1954) hostility subscale, and hostility items from four Type A behavior scales yielded eight separate factors. These included hostile anger expression, perceived control over the expression of one's anger, ease of anger provocation, frequency of anger, brooding, hostile outlook, cynicism, and sullenness. Miller et al.'s study had two implications for the development of the ARS. First, a four-item brooding factor, which was interpreted as a measure of the duration of anger and difficulty in forgetting about anger, resembles the construct of anger rumination.

Interestingly, the factor loadings of the two anger duration items were twice as high as those for the two items assessing the tendency to think about anger. This suggests that if more items were added, the construct of brooding might reveal a complex factor structure of it's own. Second, the brooding items formed a factor separate from the sullenness factor which included four items from the Spielberger et al.'s anger-in scale. This empirical finding supports the assumption that suppressed anger and anger rumination are related but different phenomena. Ruminative thoughts have been a subject of psychological investigation independently and as pertinent to emotional adjustment. Martin and Tesser (1996) defined ruminative thoughts as conscious thoughts that revolve around a common theme and reoccur without immediate situational demands.

They posited that ruminative thoughts are triggered by the discrepancy between an individual's goal and perceived progress towards this goal. "Current concerns" theory (Klinger and Klinger, 1996) asserted that ruminative thoughts are launched by emotional responses. The relationship between the strength of negative affect and the tendency to ruminate was also noted by Horowitz and Rach man. While the concept of rumination pertains to the reoccurring and unintentional thought processes, counterfactual thinking refers to thought content which is alternative to what has actually happened (Roese and Roses). The term "counterfactual thinking" is used here to refer to cognition's about antecedents and consequences of anger episodes. For example, an individual can have thoughts that an anger episode should not have happened.

Regarding the outcomes of anger episodes, a person can consider outcomes that differ from actuality, e.g. thought of retaliation or regret. Counterfactual thoughts, however, do not have to be reoccurring and unintentional. Thus, when counterfactual thinking and rumination were operational ized as individual differences variables, they were found to be independent and differentially related to negative affectivity (Kasimatis & Wells, 1995). Martin and Tesser (1996) addressed the issue of emotional valence in rumination by distinguishing between positive and negative rumination. For instance, anticipatory thoughts of high likelihood of goal attainment are viewed as positive rumination and thoughts of regret about unattained goals are viewed as negative rumination. The term rumination, however, is commonly used with the connotation of a negative phenomenological experience.

Trapnell and Campbell (1999) elaborated the concepts of self-awareness (Duval & Wick lund, 1972) and self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier & Buss, 1975), and proposed a distinction between ruminative and reflective self-focus. Ruminative self-focus was related to psychological distress and negative self-perceptions, while reflective self-focus was related to epistemic interests and accuracy of self-knowledge. The two processes were viewed as relatively independent from each other and differentially related to broader personality constructs of neuroticism and openness to experiences. Trapnell and Campbell's understanding of self-reflection resembles the constructs of intra personal intelligence (Gardner, 1983) and emotional intelligence (Sa lovey & Mayer, 1990), which represent adaptive mechanisms of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998). Nolen-Hoek sema (1996) suggested distinguishing between rumination and problems solving. She used the term rumination to refer to thoughts that do not aid in the progress towards the goal.

Correspondingly, reoccurring thoughts that are directed towards resolving some problem or reducing goal discrepancy are better referred to as problem solving. Unstructured rumination was found to interfere with the ability to solve interpersonal problems and to increase dysphoric mood. Several research traditions suggest that rumination about anger episodes may increase the intensity and duration of the anger experience and, therefore, exacerbate the possible negative consequences yjtyjtyjtyjtyjtyjtyjtyj.