‘When someone is angry with you… first decide what you want to get out of the situation’

In the introduction to your new book, How to Deal with Angry People, you talk about how you knew 'we were in trouble' when you received a call from a librarian whose staff were dealing with angry book borrowers during the Covid pandemic in late 2021. Has the world become a more angry place, and if so what's going on?

There's no certain answer to this question. We just don't have a consistent source of data to tell us for sure if we are angrier. That said, I believe we are, based on a handful of indicators that seem to reflect greater overall anger. For instance, in the US we're seeing more cases of road rage than ever before, including road rage-related shootings. We also see service providers describing angrier customers. Those sorts of findings seem to be symptomatic of broader anger problems. 

Is anger always negative, or are there situations where it can be helpful?

I would describe the emotion of anger as neither inherently positive or negative. It's a feeling state that provides you with information about how you are experiencing the world. When you get mad, it's one of the ways your brain alerts you to an injustice (much like how fear alerts you to danger or sadness alerts you to loss). In that sense, there are definitely situations where it can be helpful. If you've experienced unfair or unreasonable treatment, your anger can motivate you to respond.  

How do anger and aggression differ, and how to their impacts differ on people at their receiving end?

Anger is just the feeling state. Aggression is a behaviour where the intent is to harm someone or something. It can be verbal or physical, direct or indirect. If someone treats you poorly, you might get mad (the emotion) and hit them (aggression) or say something really cruel to hurt their feelings (aggression). This matters because aggression is just one way to express anger. Most of the time when people are angry, they don't actually lash out even if they want to. It's also very possible to act aggressively without it being motivated by anger.  

Can a person be 'born' angry – how do genetics and environment interact?

I wouldn't say people are born angry, but people can be born with a predisposition to be angry based on their genetics. Once they are born, though, there are a near infinite number of other factors that impact whether they develop anger problems. 

In your book you go into depth on ten strategies for dealing with angry people. What are your favourite strategies? 

To me, the most important thing you can do when someone is angry with you is to first decide what you want to get out of the situation. People should take a moment to think about their goals and then decide the best ways to accomplish those goals. Sometimes, that might mean getting to safety because the person is threatening. Sometimes, that might mean apologising because you really did do something wrong you need to make up for. Other times, it might mean assertive and healthy communication to try and work through whatever the problem is. Too often, people lose sight of their goals and fall back on defensiveness, a desire for revenge, or something else. 

Which strategy do you use most often when you encounter angry people?

For me, it's always really important to try and stay calm. Like a lot of people, when someone is angry with me I find myself getting anxious, feeling defensive, or even getting angry myself. That escalation makes it hard for me to think reasonably so it's harder to focus on my goals and think through what I want to do next. 

What makes you angry, and how do you deal with that response in yourself?

I can be relatively impatient, especially at work. I'm really achievement oriented and when I want to get moving on some project or get something done, I don't like to wait. So a source of anger for me is when I don't feel like other people are working fast enough or focused on the things I care about. As I've learned this about myself, I've started to scale back my expectations and think about things from my coworkers' perspectives. I've realised that I'm ready to work on things before others are and I do a better job of giving them time to adjust to a new idea or new direction. When things do feel really time sensitive or I really have good reason to want to get moving on something, I communicate that to them in advance.  

You discuss a 2014 study by Rui Fan and colleagues of 70 million Weibo posts which showed that people were more likely to share angry posts online whether they knew the original person who posted it, or not, compared with joyful, disgusting or sad posts. What are the particular challenges of the internet in terms of spreading anger?

There's a lot of different factors here. We're exposed to a lot of angering information online. It's easier to respond aggressively because we often don't know the people we are responding to and are distanced from them. It's easy to misinterpret the tone of online messages. We're also up against a lot of challenges in that angry messages spread faster so people who want their messages to spread (media outlets, politicians, etc.) will sometimes intentionally use anger as a way to encourage that spread. 

How can we as individuals deal with, or minimise online anger?

First, be aware of the bubble we're living in here and remember any time you encounter angering information that you likely don't have the full picture. Second, it goes back to something I said earlier: keep your goals in mind when you get angry or when someone else is angry at you. What is it you want to accomplish in this interaction? Is that a healthy goal that will be good for you? Is it achievable? What's the best way to accomplish it?

You're known as 'The Anger Professor' on TikTok and you wrote this book after your TikTok series of the same name went viral. What do you think are the potential benefits (and risks) of harnessing social media like TikTok for Psychology as a discipline?

I think we've got a couple of related problems here and social media both exacerbates and solves those problems. On the one hand, the general public could benefit from knowing more about psychology, especially as it relates to mental and physical wellbeing. This is what I've tried to do through TikTok and Instagram. It's very possible for people to develop healthy, basic emotion management skills this way. Of course, there are some people for whom their anger (or some other emotion) is actually a mental health problem that needs to be addressed in therapy, but that's not everyone or even most people. Most people are generally emotionally healthy but could benefit from understanding emotions a bit better or developing a higher level of emotional intelligence.  

At the same time, though, there is so much misinformation on social media that it can become a really dangerous place for people. They get bad advice or do unhealthy things in the name of self-improvement (not just related to psychology but physical fitness or other areas as well). A lot of academics have essentially said: 'It's not a good space so I'm going to avoid it.' I get that but I worry that then we're essentially giving that space up to the misinformation. There are good people working on social media to correct those problems and I would argue that we need more of them instead of fewer.  

Dr Ryan Martin is a professor of psychology and dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. His book, How To Deal With Angry People – 10 Strategies For Facing Anger At Home, At Work And In The Street, published by Watkins Publishing, is available now.