A new meta-analytic study challenges the widely accepted belief that venting anger helps alleviate emotional distress. Researchers from Ohio State University examined 154 separate studies involving more than 10000 participants. Their findings reveal that venting and engaging in other arousal-increasing activities often fail to reduce anger. Moreover, in many cases, these activities can even worsen aggressive tendencies instead of easing them.
The research, conducted by S. L. Kjærvik and B. J. Bushman and published in Clinical Psychology Review in April 2024, compared activities that raise physiological arousal, like hitting punching bags, with calming strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. Results consistently showed that calming approaches significantly reduce anger, while high-energy activities either produce no benefit or increase negative emotional arousal.
Across diverse participant groups, including students, offenders, non-offenders, and individuals with intellectual disabilities, calming methods proved consistently effective. This effectiveness was also observed regardless of whether interventions were delivered in laboratories or real-world settings, in person or digitally. Such consistency underscores the potential for these techniques to be applied broadly across varied populations and circumstances.
The study found that calming activities like deep breathing, mindfulness, and meditation resulted in moderately large reductions in anger, with a pooled effect size indicating strong reliability. In contrast, arousal-increasing methods produced negligible effects on anger reduction, with some, such as vigorous jogging, exacerbating feelings of irritation or hostility. Ball sports occasionally improved moods, but largely due to their playful and social nature.
Researchers Kjærvik and Bushman emphasized that their results undermine the catharsis theory in psychology. This theory proposes that expressing anger outwardly provides relief. Instead, their evidence supports the concept of turning down the heat, where physiological arousal is reduced to calm the emotional state. This finding aligns with established psychological theories linking emotions to both arousal levels and cognitive appraisal.
Practical applications of the findings suggest individuals can manage anger through simple and accessible or simple-to-utilize techniques without specialized equipment or therapy. Deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and mindfulness routines can be practiced independently or guided by mobile applications. These strategies not only reduce anger but may also improve general stress management and emotional resilience in daily life.
However, despite strong evidence from their systematic review, researchers highlight certain limitations, including a predominance of Western populations and insufficient details about intervention duration or provocation contexts in some studies. They recommend further research to explore cultural variations, as well as to refine understanding of how specific calming methods operate across different environments and demographic profiles.
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
- Kjærvik, S. L., and Bushman, B. J. 2024. “A Meta-analytic Review of Anger Management Activities that Increase or Decrease Arousal: What Fuels or Douses Rage?” Clinical Psychology Review. 109: 102414. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102414