It often happens that, when we are in a bad mood, we find ourselves in situations where, who knows how, we end up arguing with someone. Anger is a magnet for these kinds of situations ; The moment we notice that the intentions or points of view of others conflict with our own, an exchange of arguments occurs that normally leads nowhere.
This fact alone seems annoying, but there is something worse about this tendency to get into trouble: when we are in a bad mood we are significantly worse at reasoning and making decisions. And no, this does not happen with all emotions.
Anger causes us to take a more aggressive policy when expressing our point of view instead of maintaining a discreet attitude, but at the same time it distorts our way of thinking, what we say and the way we act. it does not reflect who we really are; our identity is totally distorted by a rush of emotion. Let’s see what this curious psychological effect consists of.
For decades, research in psychology has shown that when we learn about the environment, others, or ourselves, we do not do so simply by accumulating objective data that comes to us through the senses.
What happens, rather, is that our brain creates explanations about reality using the information that comes from outside. He acts, more or less, like the viewer of a movie, who instead of memorizing the scenes he sees, constructs a meaning, imagines its plot and from that predicts what may happen in future scenes.
In short, we maintain an active role building in our imagination an explanation of the facts that goes beyond what we see, touch, hear, etc.
This idea, which was already investigated in the first half of the 20th century by Gestalt psychologists, means that our analysis of situations is influenced by everything that is happening in our brain; rather than relying solely on sensory data.
That is our emotions mix with those mental processes that we usually consider rational: the creation of arguments with which to refute a colleague’s point of view, making decisions when choosing a new car… and also the interpretation of what others do, for example.
Emotions and moods totally influence cognitive processes that are theoretically only based on logic and reason. And anger and annoyance, specifically, have a great capacity to interfere in these phenomena, as we will see.
When anger controls us
Different research has shown that a few drops of anger are enough to distort our ability to use reason even if we compare this with what happens when under the influence of other emotions.
For example, being in a bad mood makes us much more likely to perceive strange and ambiguous behavior as a provocation towards us, or it can even cause a neutral explanation of events to be seen by us as an attack on our ideology or opinion.
In the same way, when we are in a bad mood it will be easier for us to remember past experiences in which we were also angry, and at the same time it will be easier for us to attribute bad moods to others So to speak, when we are angry we tend to interpret reality in a way consistent with that emotional state, with the glasses of bad mood.
Although we may not realize it, anger totally conditions our social life, and significantly increases the possibility that we react in a non-rational way, even betraying our ethical values and our convictions. Let’s look at some examples.
An American researcher welcomes a series of volunteers who have agreed to participate in his project and then asks them Remember an experience that made you feel very angry and explain in detail how it happened. The researcher asks another group of participants something similar, but instead of remembering and explaining an experience that caused anger, they must do so with one that is very sad. Members of a third group are asked to remember and explain any experience of their choice.
The researcher then asks volunteers to imagine being on a jury that will decide the guilt of some people in cases of bad behavior. To do this, they are provided with detailed information about these fictitious people and what they did, and from that data they must give a verdict. However, in half of the cases the person whose guilt must be judged has a Hispanic name, while in the rest of the cases the name has no relation to a minority.
Well, the results show that people who had remembered the experiences that produced anger, but not the other two groups, were significantly more likely to see guilt in the person with a Hispanic name. The fact that they have rekindled some of the anger they once experienced had made them xenophobic for a few minutes
The explanation
The experiment that we have seen and its results were part of a real investigation whose conclusions were published in the magazine European Journal of Social Psychology.
The team of researchers explained this phenomenon by pointing out that anger is an emotion that has extraordinary power in making rationality become dominated by the irrational, unfounded and intuitive beliefs and, in general, biases, which include stereotypes about each person’s race and cultural origins.
Thus, while emotions such as sadness have a more cognitive component and depend on abstract thinking, anger is more primary, depends less on mental processes linked to abstractions and depends more on the amygdala, one of the brain structures of the limbic system. , the part of our nervous system that generates emotions. Somehow, the power of influence of this emotion is more powerful and can interfere with all kinds of mental processes, since it acts “from the root” of our brain.
That is also why, when the same team of researchers that carried out the previous experiment did a similar one asking participants to give their opinion about an article that defended a specific political measure, they saw that people who had been led towards a slightly Sad people decided their opinion about the article based on its content, while angry people were rather influenced by the authority and resume of the supposed authors of the text.
So, when you notice that a bad mood takes over, keep in mind that not even your rationality will be saved of the influence of this emotion. If you want to maintain a constructive attitude towards your social relationships, it is best to avoid arguing over unimportant details with others.
