I’m breaking the rule a bit by asking about myself here.
Sometimes when I have down time and am daydreaming, especially if I’m walking somewhere or going for a run, I fantasize about someone wronging me (say with a traffic violation), then imagine myself getting angry, yelling at them, and physically beating them up. I think about knocking them down, screaming at them, challenging them to get up, and knocking them down again.
I’ve never acted on such a fantasy. I have no idea how to actually fight someone if I wanted to. It’s very rare that I show anger, and I don’t think I’ve ever punched someone as an adult. But I think about it pretty regularly, and the thoughts disturb me. I have no idea where they come from or why I take pleasure in these sorts of fantasies.
Is this a common thought pattern? Why do people have it?
London psychologist Stanley Rachman presented a questionnaire to healthy college students and found that virtually all said they had these thoughts from time to time, including thoughts of sexual violence, sexual punishment, “unnatural” sex acts, painful sexual practices, blasphemous or obscene images, thoughts of harming elderly people or someone close to them, violence against animals or towards children, and impulsive or abusive outbursts or utterances.[6] Such bad thoughts are universal among humans, and have “almost certainly always been a part of the human condition”.[7]
I don’t think the phenomenon of ‘intrusive thoughts’ is relevant. Intrusive thoughts feel differently than what Mark is describing. The difference is that intrusive thoughts are ‘intrusive’, and almost feel like someone else is having them, whereas fantasizing about being angry is more active and more pleasant.
I’ve had intrusive thoughts too and I’ve wondered how common they are. Thank you for letting me know that they are something most people experience. I would share some on here, but they’re pretty embarrassing.
If these are the “common” ones, then from my experience they’re related to what’s going on in one’s life. By which I mean that I’ve had similar thoughts, but only during a time when there was a person who I wanted to fight, was afraid of fighting, and couldn’t fight, and not any other times.
When I first read this, I thought “woah, that’s kinda weird and worrying”. Then I realised I do something similar. I sometimes rehearse violent confrontations in my imagination.
I’ve been involved in a few violent confrontations as an adult, and they’re nothing like you imagine them to be. People like to imagine all the badass things they would have done in those situations, but when you suddenly find yourself in a brawl, your thoughts are generally “what the hell’s going on here? Is this really happening?” I’ve heard accounts of highly trained martial artists experiencing the same thing. Even if you’re physically prepared for a fight, you’re not necessarily prepared for the social situation of a fight.
I assume that when I imagine violent first-person scenarios it’s some sort of long-term rehearsal process where I’m psychologically preparing myself for conflict at some point in the future. I generally try and avoid situations which have a high risk of physical conflict, though, so my sample size is so small as to be useless when trying to figure out if it does any good.
Consider yourself lucky. I told them that any attempt on my part to call off the attack was just a trick and if they fell for it, they’d forfeit their bonus.
I fantasize about horrific situations to subject fictional characters to. This I recently recognized as being due to my long-term work on decompartmentalizing new information. Essentially I find rules of the fictional realm, put them together in ways not intended by the original author, and get the small rush of self-congratulations for “taking an idea to its logical conclusion.” This results in being “too realistic” for many fantasy settings. On the other hand, it is why rationalist fiction so pleases me—it reminds me of how I think!
An author, possibly Howard Taylor, said his method for writing was to: set up a situation, have everything go as badly as possible then try and find a way out of it.
This could be an interesting research topic: Ask people how often then imagine having a fight with someone. Ask people how often then have a fight. Ask people how angry they feel. Then give them some questionnaire with is supposed to discover supressed anger. Make statistics. Post on LW. Gain 25 karma points. :D
EDIT: Actually, a rational course of action is to outsource all the work on some psychology student, and then just check their statistics, post on LW, and collect karma.
I have a variant of imagining someone saying something annoying, and then trying to figure out an answer to it. I think the sequence is more likely to end with me giving up because the imagined annoying person just won’t listen.
Fortunately, when I realized (after some decades of doing this) that it was a waste of mental and emotional cpus—why am I inventing occasions to be annoyed?-- I found that I did a lot less of it, and could bail out of it quickly if I found I was doing it.
It’s just an evolutionary ad-hoc story, but I think that in an ancient environment you would have real fights sometimes. An impulse to imagine fighting, even when you are not, is an opportunity to rehearse the techniques and learn from mistakes.
I remember reading some article that if some skill requires N hours of time, imagining the practice realistically with full attention, is almost as good as the real practice. This probably assumes that you had the real practice before, so your imagination is realistic enough. In ancient environment, your imagination of fight would be realistic enough.
An impulse to imagine fighting, even when you are not, is an opportunity to rehearse the techniques and learn from mistakes.
It is my observation that people seldom have very realistic ideas about what’s involved in a fight unless they have some training or hands-on experience. Scenarios like that don’t really have a lot of bearing on practical technique, so I’d be rather surprised if this emotional experience were best explained by there being a brain-module that rehearses hypothetical fights instinctively to increase people’s odds. It seems like a logical implication would be that people with this trait fare better in physical competition, and if it’s a standard trait of humans, then why are we so abysmal at instinctive combat?
Personally I don’t fantasise about violence in itself as much as the exercise of power and control. Not sure how common that is, but possibly if you generally feel out of control the most obvious way for you to exer some seems to be violence (whereas for me its people doing what I tell them to).
Yes, I have similar thought patterns, though usually the angriness happens without or with only slight provocations (people not conforming to my asthetic norms, people loudly using their mobile in public). Fortunately, my fantasies are totally over the top, so I have a hard time taking them seriously or worrying about them—it’s like watching a splatter movie inside my head. I don’t feel guilty, worried or ashamed for watching those, so I don’t worry if my mind produces them for free.
A friend of mine with schizoid personality disorder has similar thought patterns from time to time, however, it is a lot harder for her not to act on these thoughts, and far more stressful.
So, it isn’t a thought pattern only you experience, but I’m afraid I can’t answer why people have it.
Why do I fantasize about being angry?
I’m breaking the rule a bit by asking about myself here.
Sometimes when I have down time and am daydreaming, especially if I’m walking somewhere or going for a run, I fantasize about someone wronging me (say with a traffic violation), then imagine myself getting angry, yelling at them, and physically beating them up. I think about knocking them down, screaming at them, challenging them to get up, and knocking them down again.
I’ve never acted on such a fantasy. I have no idea how to actually fight someone if I wanted to. It’s very rare that I show anger, and I don’t think I’ve ever punched someone as an adult. But I think about it pretty regularly, and the thoughts disturb me. I have no idea where they come from or why I take pleasure in these sorts of fantasies.
Is this a common thought pattern? Why do people have it?
It’s called Intrusive Thoughts, and apparently most people have these:
I don’t think the phenomenon of ‘intrusive thoughts’ is relevant. Intrusive thoughts feel differently than what Mark is describing. The difference is that intrusive thoughts are ‘intrusive’, and almost feel like someone else is having them, whereas fantasizing about being angry is more active and more pleasant.
I’ve had intrusive thoughts too and I’ve wondered how common they are. Thank you for letting me know that they are something most people experience. I would share some on here, but they’re pretty embarrassing.
If these are the “common” ones, then from my experience they’re related to what’s going on in one’s life. By which I mean that I’ve had similar thoughts, but only during a time when there was a person who I wanted to fight, was afraid of fighting, and couldn’t fight, and not any other times.
When I first read this, I thought “woah, that’s kinda weird and worrying”. Then I realised I do something similar. I sometimes rehearse violent confrontations in my imagination.
I’ve been involved in a few violent confrontations as an adult, and they’re nothing like you imagine them to be. People like to imagine all the badass things they would have done in those situations, but when you suddenly find yourself in a brawl, your thoughts are generally “what the hell’s going on here? Is this really happening?” I’ve heard accounts of highly trained martial artists experiencing the same thing. Even if you’re physically prepared for a fight, you’re not necessarily prepared for the social situation of a fight.
I assume that when I imagine violent first-person scenarios it’s some sort of long-term rehearsal process where I’m psychologically preparing myself for conflict at some point in the future. I generally try and avoid situations which have a high risk of physical conflict, though, so my sample size is so small as to be useless when trying to figure out if it does any good.
That’s why I’ve hired someone to pay strangers to fight me at random.
G.K.Chesterton described something similar in The Club of Queer Trades:
http://freaklit.blogspot.com/2011/07/adventure-and-romance-agency.html
The parent is a joke.
Are you sure? Because I’ve already paid them. I tried to cancel by phone, but it’s turned off; they are probably busy right now with something.
Consider yourself lucky. I told them that any attempt on my part to call off the attack was just a trick and if they fell for it, they’d forfeit their bonus.
Oops.
I fantasize about horrific situations to subject fictional characters to. This I recently recognized as being due to my long-term work on decompartmentalizing new information. Essentially I find rules of the fictional realm, put them together in ways not intended by the original author, and get the small rush of self-congratulations for “taking an idea to its logical conclusion.” This results in being “too realistic” for many fantasy settings. On the other hand, it is why rationalist fiction so pleases me—it reminds me of how I think!
Depending on what you mean by “horrific situation” you may have a psychological condition known as “author”.
An author, possibly Howard Taylor, said his method for writing was to: set up a situation, have everything go as badly as possible then try and find a way out of it.
Oh, hey. You write fanfiction too, right? I think I recognize your name.
:P
The amateur psychoanalyst simulation I’m running would latch on to this:
This could be an interesting research topic: Ask people how often then imagine having a fight with someone. Ask people how often then have a fight. Ask people how angry they feel. Then give them some questionnaire with is supposed to discover supressed anger. Make statistics. Post on LW. Gain 25 karma points. :D
EDIT: Actually, a rational course of action is to outsource all the work on some psychology student, and then just check their statistics, post on LW, and collect karma.
Violence is just as much an inherent drive as sex for males. Violent narratives for entertainment are almost universal among human cultures.
I have a variant of imagining someone saying something annoying, and then trying to figure out an answer to it. I think the sequence is more likely to end with me giving up because the imagined annoying person just won’t listen.
Fortunately, when I realized (after some decades of doing this) that it was a waste of mental and emotional cpus—why am I inventing occasions to be annoyed?-- I found that I did a lot less of it, and could bail out of it quickly if I found I was doing it.
It’s just an evolutionary ad-hoc story, but I think that in an ancient environment you would have real fights sometimes. An impulse to imagine fighting, even when you are not, is an opportunity to rehearse the techniques and learn from mistakes.
I remember reading some article that if some skill requires N hours of time, imagining the practice realistically with full attention, is almost as good as the real practice. This probably assumes that you had the real practice before, so your imagination is realistic enough. In ancient environment, your imagination of fight would be realistic enough.
It is my observation that people seldom have very realistic ideas about what’s involved in a fight unless they have some training or hands-on experience. Scenarios like that don’t really have a lot of bearing on practical technique, so I’d be rather surprised if this emotional experience were best explained by there being a brain-module that rehearses hypothetical fights instinctively to increase people’s odds. It seems like a logical implication would be that people with this trait fare better in physical competition, and if it’s a standard trait of humans, then why are we so abysmal at instinctive combat?
Personally I don’t fantasise about violence in itself as much as the exercise of power and control. Not sure how common that is, but possibly if you generally feel out of control the most obvious way for you to exer some seems to be violence (whereas for me its people doing what I tell them to).
Yes, I have similar thought patterns, though usually the angriness happens without or with only slight provocations (people not conforming to my asthetic norms, people loudly using their mobile in public). Fortunately, my fantasies are totally over the top, so I have a hard time taking them seriously or worrying about them—it’s like watching a splatter movie inside my head. I don’t feel guilty, worried or ashamed for watching those, so I don’t worry if my mind produces them for free.
A friend of mine with schizoid personality disorder has similar thought patterns from time to time, however, it is a lot harder for her not to act on these thoughts, and far more stressful.
So, it isn’t a thought pattern only you experience, but I’m afraid I can’t answer why people have it.