Anger

What follows is a Boston Globe article published on September 8: “Why are you so angry? Maybe it’s because politicians (and social media companies) want you that way” by Rob Henderson [contributing writer for Globe Opinion, has a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge and is the author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class”].  We Catholics – and everybody else and in-between – should heed his opinion about anger.  I certainly should.

(begin) It seems as if people are angrier than ever. According to a poll by CBS News, 84 percent of Americans believe we are angrier than previous generations. Another survey recently found that nine in 10 Americans can name either a recent news event or something about American politics that made them angry, while only half could identify such a thing that made them proud.

What explains this rage? One noteworthy reason is that social media platforms have figured out how to monetize anger, using algorithms that reward outrage to keep users doomscrolling. But another is that exploiting anger is politically convenient (my emphasis).  The strategic use of anger in politics has transformed it from a natural human emotion into a weapon of division, with far-reaching consequences for our social cohesion and democratic governance.

According to Steven Webster, assistant professor of political science at Indiana University and author of “American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics,” “Anger provides ample benefits to those politicians who are able to use it most skillfully.” Indeed, across political settings, people who are angry are more likely to vote than those who are not. In other words, politicians who can stoke anger can use it to motivate their base. The angrier voters are at the opposing party, the more likely they are to show up at the polls to support their own party. As Webster puts it, “angry voters are loyal voters.”

Provoking rage against selected groups is also an effective way to promote unity in politics among other groups. Today, many Americans across the political spectrum are encouraged to feel they are being victimized. It’s no coincidence that one of Donald Trump’s go-to lines on the campaign trail is “They’re laughing at us.” Being laughed at induces humiliation, which often quickly transforms into rage (my emphasis).

Mass media and social media hold some responsibility here too. They are full of angry and moralizing stories. Everyone seems to feel mistreated and upset, which might make sense given what we know about anger. Indeed, a widely cited study from 2017 on the social media platform then known as Twitter found that negative words such as “attack,” “bad,” “blame,” “shame,” and “wrong” were each associated with a 20 percent increase in the likelihood that a post will be retweeted.

More recently, a 2023 study found that negative words in online news stories’ headlines increase traffic. Words like “wrong,” “bad,” “awful,” “hate,” “sick,” “fight,” and “scary” each predict a 2.3 percent increase in click-through rates. These findings are disheartening. To understand why people respond so powerfully to anger, though, it helps to understand the biological roots of this emotion.

Anger is not necessarily a bad thing, having evolved as a tool to protect us, make others less likely to harm or take advantage of us, and motivate us to persist in the face of obstacles. Anger gives us a sense of control and motivates us to take action. It can also help people bargain for better treatment from others (my emphasis).

A series of studies published last year led by Heather C. Lench at Texas A&M University found that angry people persisted longer and did better at solving word problems. Angry people also earned higher scores on a challenging video game and were more likely to sign a petition to stop student tuition increases. Furthermore, analyzing survey data from the 2016 and 2020 US general elections, the studies found that a person’s anger at an opposing candidate’s potential win predicted a greater likelihood that the person would vote in the next election.

Our emotions evolved in the context of small hunter-gatherer societies before the rise of agriculture roughly 12,000 years ago. Because culture and technology evolve faster than biology, our emotions are adaptive for those small-scale communities, but our emotions are not necessarily adaptive in the same way in modern technologically advanced societies. The fact that anger helps us stand up for ourselves and demand better treatment makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, given that showing anger could prevent exploitation and help with survival.

In our modern world, though, anger often leads to frustration. We are regularly exposed to profound societal problems without obvious and immediately actionable ways to resolve them. The mismatch between the causes of our anger and the lack of solutions leaves many of us feeling stuck. Politicians and public figures capitalize on this feeling, aiming to energize people into converting their anger into votes (my emphasis).

But this strategy comes at a cost. In fact, voter anger has a host of negative consequences. For instance, when American voters are angry about politics, they are inclined to avoid social interactions or social events where they are likely to come into contact with those whose political leanings differ from their own.

In a chapter titled “Emotions in Politics” in “The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions,” published last year, the psychologists Florian van Leeuwen and Michael Bang Peterson suggest that anger, like some other emotions, “seems to be a distinct strategy for increasing what one is entitled to in the minds of others.” In other words, because being the object of someone’s anger is typically unpleasant, expressing anger at others often recalibrates how they treat us.

Anger also serves to reduce Americans’ trust in the national government (my emphasis). In an era of heightened nationalization, the federal government serves as the focal point for Americans’ views about politics. Because anger causes us to evaluate people, places, and institutions in a negative fashion, politicians’ stoking of voter anger has the unfortunate consequence of lowering Americans’ trust in their governing institutions.

This decline in trust is marked. In 1958, 73 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government “always” or “most of the time.” By 2024, this figure dropped to 22 percent. This diminished level of trust presents challenges for effective governance. Trust in government has been shown to be essential for promoting bipartisan cooperation and maintaining support for social welfare programs. Thus, should trust in government continue to decline, we are likely to see less bipartisanship and a further erosion of social cohesion. Provoking anger supplies short-term political gains that lead to long-term societal costs.

Understanding how our emotions are manipulated is the first step in breaking the cycle of outrage (my emphasis). While anger may be a natural and sometimes necessary emotion, we are capable of recognizing when it is being weaponized against us. As an avid user of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, I have recommended muting certain phrases and words intended to express anger or condemnation (e.g., “Let that sink in,” “I can’t believe this has to be said,” “Yikes”) in order to clean up your feed and avoid being captured by the algorithm.

Recognizing when we are being manipulated, choosing not to react impulsively, and taking responsibility for our own experiences when consuming media can weaken the power that anger-driven politics holds over us. (end)

So, let's chill and stop being manipulated by anger mongers.  Easier said than done.

Deacon David Pierce