This just in: Anger can be handy

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It can be useful, that is, when you’ve got a confrontational task to perform, according to a new study conducted by psychologists Maya Tamir and Christopher Mitchell of Boston College, and James Gross of Stanford.

According to a press release from the Association for Psychological Science, the researchers first told study volunteers they had either a confrontational task to perform--a shoot-your-enemies-dead computer game called ‘Soldier of Fortune’--or a nonconfrontational one, ‘Diner Dash,’ a computer game wherein you play a waitress serving customers.

The researchers’ first finding: Subjects who knew they had the confrontational game to perform expressed a stronger wish to make themselves angry ahead of the task--say, by listening to mad songs or remembering things from the past that angered them.

The second finding: these anger-inducing strategies actually improved subjects’ performance on the kill-your-enemies game. It didn’t aid performance in the serve-the-customers waitress game. (We’d imagine that serving customers in a crowded restaurant would be enough to induce plenty of anger on its own, however.)

The study will appear in April issue of the journal Psychological Science, which is one of those, unfortunately, that you have to pay to read. What a pity! The March issue has an intriguing lineup of scholarly reports, including ones entitled ‘Happiness Is a Personal(ity) Thing: The Genetics of Personality and Well-Being in a Representative Sample’ and ‘Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead? Status Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace,’ and--my personal favorite--’Where Do We Look During Potentially Offensive Behavior?’

--Rosie Mestel