I’m usually skeptical of psychology, but this bit startled me awake:
Emily had a rough day at work, so she unleashes her anger onto her husband and cat.
It looks like we found that elusive beast: an example of human behavior that doesn’t seem explainable by optimization (for goals, PR, evolutionary goals or anything else). It’s a pure negative yet people do it all the time. I don’t know what to make of it, does anyone have ideas?
The general function of anger seems to be a bargaining tactic aimed at making others treat you better or gaining a larger share of resources. With that in mind I can think of a few plausible explanations for people unleashing anger from work onto family members:
For some reason (evolutionary or physiological) it takes time for anger to dissipate, and this is a side effect of that.
It’s a deniable, low risk way to demand additional concessions on top of an existing arrangement. If the other party gives in, it might become a new norm, and if they don’t, afterwards you can say “sorry, it was just work; I didn’t mean it.”
It’s a way to test how much the other person cares about you, or more generally what you can get away with, for future reference. By having a plausible excuse to be angry you can avoid coming across as crazy or unreasonable.
You’re signaling actual adversity, a reduction in expected future resources, and demanding concessions based on that.
Perhaps an even simpler explanation: In the EEA, there was no “work” and “home”, and if you were angry with someone, they were almost always nearby. (As a thought experiment, if Emily’s husband came to visit her at work while she was arguing with her boss, I imagine Emily would sooner try to rope her husband into her side of the argument than take out her anger on her husband.)
I’ve been confused by anger for awhile, or at least several common contexts in which it comes up. My assumption is that it was useful in a bunch of circumstances for some reasons (such as nature’s precommitment device, a source of motivation, and dominance contests), and initially there were fewer social strategies available in which anger would be anti-helpful, and most of the maladaptive instances of it weren’t as maladaptive).
Related thing: once, someone was really mean to a friend of mine. This came after a very bad day, and it was one thing too many, and my friend shut down, not really able to do anything, completely overwhelmed. By contrast, I got angry, and wanted to punish the person who was being cruel.
And this is interesting a) because anger seemed like a useful thing to have to counterbalance the overwhelmed feeling (it could give you more motivation to stick up for yourself). But, also, what is the totally shut down when overwhelmed behavior doing in the first place? That seems super pointless. It makes sense that you can’t handle that many things, but why can’t you just, like, focus on one particular thing and get that done, you know, like you’d probably want to have done anyhow?
(Pixar’s Inside Out hypothesizes that Sadness is there to arouse sympathy in others and get support, but that just raises more questions)
But, also, what is the totally shut down when overwhelmed behavior doing in the first place? That seems super pointless.
Straightforwardly this seems to be a submission behavior. I’m not sure where it originated but social mammals seem to universally exhibit behaviors to submit to the aggression of conspecifics. Submission is often useful for surviving aggression that might otherwise result in injury or death.
Seems also like the “playing dead” behaviour. If you’re under attack and aren’t going to summon/indicate allies (via sadness) or enforce your boundary yourself (via anger) or appease the attacker (via submission), another option is to give up on active response and hope that if you play dead just right, they’ll lose interest for some reason. Many attackers’ goals are better served by a responsive opponent; and attacking someone dead is both potentially unhealthy and no fun.
Sometimes people are just dumb, and repeatedly do things that don’t seem to accomplish anything because they don’t know how to do anything better (because they don’t understand why they’re doing it in the first place). In other words, yes, there has to be a reason for them doing it, no, it shouldn’t be expected to be a good reason or to stand up to reflection.
In my personal experience, “I’m feeling cranky at innocent parties because of rough day” feels like a response to having less cognitive resources to spend on whatever is being asked of me. It’s the kind of thing where if it’s not too bad, “hey, I’m really not up to this. I had a rough day and need some space or gentle handling” would feel like an attractive alternative. However sometimes even coming up with that is difficult, so the temptation is to take the easy option of lashing out which communicates the same thing (“either give me my space or walk on egg shells, because I don’t want to deal with more shit when my plate is already full”) in a much more hostile manner. “Is it worth the costs of being hostile?” is the relevant question, but people often run into limits of just being overwhelmed and not being able to actually compute all the answers before picking a choice and running with it.
Does that help answer your question, or am I trying to explain the wrong part?
What’s the evolutionary reason for needing gentle handling after a rough day then? It’s a distinct emotion that evolved but I can’t understand what it’s for.
It feels like the same kind of reason that you need to be gentle with your body after running a marathon. I could try to be more specific about what might be going on that makes it difficult to keep it up, but the point is that it seems to be a fundamentally difficult to remain unfatigued and if you don’t slow down when fatigued you’re not going to move very well and are likely to break something.
Are you asking more “why can’t you mentally run unlimited marathons in a row without slowing down” or more “what damage do you risk doing when continuing through ‘mental fatigue’ that makes it something you have to heed?”?
Does every fact about human physiology & psychology need to be directly evolutionarily beneficial, though? I would expect that some things are harmful side effects of other beneficial things, some things are harmful but not-that-bad overall and not totally selected out, and some things are just due to constraints which can’t easily be overcome. I don’t think every frailness and vulnerability that human bodies have is evolutionarily beneficial; I don’t see why that would be true of human minds, either.
Getting intensely angry probably involves activating a lot of systems in your body to get ready for fighting—how quickly do those systems calm themselves down? How quickly was it correct for them to switch back to everything-is-peaceful mode when we were more like chimpanzees?
Put another way, it makes a lot more sense that humans stay in states too long if we find out that it’s a lot easier to make the derivative of that state react to evidence than the thing itself.
Optimizing for survival: that person needs to discharge their cognitive dissonance (manifesting as hurt feelings or stress) in order to return to functional baseline, but can’t do that on the original cause for any number of reasons: will get disciplined, fired (at work or school), will be responded to or threatened with physical violence, etc.
So they discharge it onto someone/something else where the consequences are distant or non-existent. E.g. Emily’s husband may shrug it off, or it may cause cracks in their relationship that will later cause them to separate (but of course she will have a much harder time thinking through that in the moment).
(I’m trying to be more concise in my writing and communication; let me know if you want clarification!)
I’m usually skeptical of psychology, but this bit startled me awake:
It looks like we found that elusive beast: an example of human behavior that doesn’t seem explainable by optimization (for goals, PR, evolutionary goals or anything else). It’s a pure negative yet people do it all the time. I don’t know what to make of it, does anyone have ideas?
The general function of anger seems to be a bargaining tactic aimed at making others treat you better or gaining a larger share of resources. With that in mind I can think of a few plausible explanations for people unleashing anger from work onto family members:
For some reason (evolutionary or physiological) it takes time for anger to dissipate, and this is a side effect of that.
It’s a deniable, low risk way to demand additional concessions on top of an existing arrangement. If the other party gives in, it might become a new norm, and if they don’t, afterwards you can say “sorry, it was just work; I didn’t mean it.”
It’s a way to test how much the other person cares about you, or more generally what you can get away with, for future reference. By having a plausible excuse to be angry you can avoid coming across as crazy or unreasonable.
You’re signaling actual adversity, a reduction in expected future resources, and demanding concessions based on that.
Perhaps an even simpler explanation: In the EEA, there was no “work” and “home”, and if you were angry with someone, they were almost always nearby. (As a thought experiment, if Emily’s husband came to visit her at work while she was arguing with her boss, I imagine Emily would sooner try to rope her husband into her side of the argument than take out her anger on her husband.)
I’ve been confused by anger for awhile, or at least several common contexts in which it comes up. My assumption is that it was useful in a bunch of circumstances for some reasons (such as nature’s precommitment device, a source of motivation, and dominance contests), and initially there were fewer social strategies available in which anger would be anti-helpful, and most of the maladaptive instances of it weren’t as maladaptive).
Related thing: once, someone was really mean to a friend of mine. This came after a very bad day, and it was one thing too many, and my friend shut down, not really able to do anything, completely overwhelmed. By contrast, I got angry, and wanted to punish the person who was being cruel.
And this is interesting a) because anger seemed like a useful thing to have to counterbalance the overwhelmed feeling (it could give you more motivation to stick up for yourself). But, also, what is the totally shut down when overwhelmed behavior doing in the first place? That seems super pointless. It makes sense that you can’t handle that many things, but why can’t you just, like, focus on one particular thing and get that done, you know, like you’d probably want to have done anyhow?
(Pixar’s Inside Out hypothesizes that Sadness is there to arouse sympathy in others and get support, but that just raises more questions)
Straightforwardly this seems to be a submission behavior. I’m not sure where it originated but social mammals seem to universally exhibit behaviors to submit to the aggression of conspecifics. Submission is often useful for surviving aggression that might otherwise result in injury or death.
Seems also like the “playing dead” behaviour. If you’re under attack and aren’t going to summon/indicate allies (via sadness) or enforce your boundary yourself (via anger) or appease the attacker (via submission), another option is to give up on active response and hope that if you play dead just right, they’ll lose interest for some reason. Many attackers’ goals are better served by a responsive opponent; and attacking someone dead is both potentially unhealthy and no fun.
Anger about asserting your rights
Sometimes people are just dumb, and repeatedly do things that don’t seem to accomplish anything because they don’t know how to do anything better (because they don’t understand why they’re doing it in the first place). In other words, yes, there has to be a reason for them doing it, no, it shouldn’t be expected to be a good reason or to stand up to reflection.
In my personal experience, “I’m feeling cranky at innocent parties because of rough day” feels like a response to having less cognitive resources to spend on whatever is being asked of me. It’s the kind of thing where if it’s not too bad, “hey, I’m really not up to this. I had a rough day and need some space or gentle handling” would feel like an attractive alternative. However sometimes even coming up with that is difficult, so the temptation is to take the easy option of lashing out which communicates the same thing (“either give me my space or walk on egg shells, because I don’t want to deal with more shit when my plate is already full”) in a much more hostile manner. “Is it worth the costs of being hostile?” is the relevant question, but people often run into limits of just being overwhelmed and not being able to actually compute all the answers before picking a choice and running with it.
Does that help answer your question, or am I trying to explain the wrong part?
What’s the evolutionary reason for needing gentle handling after a rough day then? It’s a distinct emotion that evolved but I can’t understand what it’s for.
It feels like the same kind of reason that you need to be gentle with your body after running a marathon. I could try to be more specific about what might be going on that makes it difficult to keep it up, but the point is that it seems to be a fundamentally difficult to remain unfatigued and if you don’t slow down when fatigued you’re not going to move very well and are likely to break something.
Are you asking more “why can’t you mentally run unlimited marathons in a row without slowing down” or more “what damage do you risk doing when continuing through ‘mental fatigue’ that makes it something you have to heed?”?
Does every fact about human physiology & psychology need to be directly evolutionarily beneficial, though? I would expect that some things are harmful side effects of other beneficial things, some things are harmful but not-that-bad overall and not totally selected out, and some things are just due to constraints which can’t easily be overcome. I don’t think every frailness and vulnerability that human bodies have is evolutionarily beneficial; I don’t see why that would be true of human minds, either.
Getting intensely angry probably involves activating a lot of systems in your body to get ready for fighting—how quickly do those systems calm themselves down? How quickly was it correct for them to switch back to everything-is-peaceful mode when we were more like chimpanzees?
Put another way, it makes a lot more sense that humans stay in states too long if we find out that it’s a lot easier to make the derivative of that state react to evidence than the thing itself.
Optimizing for survival: that person needs to discharge their cognitive dissonance (manifesting as hurt feelings or stress) in order to return to functional baseline, but can’t do that on the original cause for any number of reasons: will get disciplined, fired (at work or school), will be responded to or threatened with physical violence, etc.
So they discharge it onto someone/something else where the consequences are distant or non-existent. E.g. Emily’s husband may shrug it off, or it may cause cracks in their relationship that will later cause them to separate (but of course she will have a much harder time thinking through that in the moment).
(I’m trying to be more concise in my writing and communication; let me know if you want clarification!)