Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Broad claims about which nations bottle it up and which let it fly are entertaining and close to useless for any actual person in front of you. Ask instead.
The question that earns its place is plain: what happened in your house when somebody got angry. Who was allowed to be loud, who had to go quiet, what happened the next morning. Two minutes of that tells you more than any amount of general knowledge about where a person is from.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Consult with them about matters (Quran 3:159). Asking people is put forward as the way to proceed, even for someone with far better instincts than ours.
فَبِمَا رَحۡمَةࣲ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ لِنتَ لَهُمۡۖ وَلَوۡ كُنتَ فَظًّا غَلِيظَ ٱلۡقَلۡبِ لَٱنفَضُّواْ مِنۡ حَوۡلِكَۖ فَٱعۡفُ عَنۡهُمۡ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرۡ لَهُمۡ وَشَاوِرۡهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡرِۖ فَإِذَا عَزَمۡتَ فَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُتَوَكِّلِينَ
By an act of mercy from God, you [Prophet] were gentle in your dealings with them- had you been harsh, or hard-hearted, they would have dispersed and left you- so pardon them and ask forgiveness for them. Consult with them about matters, then, when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God: God loves those who put their trust in Him
Qur’an 3:159read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of youth aggression found empathy had only a small inverse relationship with aggressive behaviour, while callous and unemotional traits predicted it more strongly. Even sensible-sounding general assumptions about who behaves aggressively hold up poorly. It pooled studies of young people, so the adult picture may differ, though the caution about tidy assumptions travels.
Ritchie MB, Neufeld RWJ, Yoon M, Li A, Mitchell DGV. (2022). Predicting youth aggression with empathy and callous unemotional traits: A Meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A person's own history predicts them, and a group average does not.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If anger management sounds like something being done to you, call it impulse control instead. The work is the same and the word is easier to live with.
The energy behind your anger is not waste. People who feel strongly about what is wrong are often the ones who end up changing something.
A lot of anger carries a hidden demand: you damaged how I feel about myself, so now you restore it. That leaves your steadiness in somebody else's hands.