Episode 81 · 8 March 2024 · 48:34

81: How to deal with angry people, with Dr Martin @TheAngerProfessor

Featuring Martin @TheAngerProfessor

0:000:00

Tip: click any timestamp below to jump there and keep playing.

Chapters & timestamps

Click any timestamp to jump the player to that moment.

The myth of cathartic aggression
interview#anger #myths #psychology
Introduction to the episode and hosts
intro#podcast #introduction #hosts
What anger actually is
interview#anger #definition #psychology
Exploring the causes of anger and its expression
interview#anger #causes #nature-nurture
Individual differences in how we get angry
interview#anger #individual-differences #psychology
The distinction between being angry and being an angry person
interview#anger #personality #psychology
Practical advice for managing personal anger and dealing with angry others
interview#anger-management #workplace #behavioral-science
Non-complementary responses — how to de-escalate angry people
interview#de-escalation #anger #communication
Dispelling common myths about anger and its management
interview#anger #myths #team-building
Gender differences in expressing anger
interview#anger #gender #expression
Dr. Martin's journey to becoming the Anger Professor
interview#anger #professor #career
Final thoughts and where to find Dr. Martin
outro#anger #resources #podcast

Show notes

How to Deal with Angry People — with Dr. Ryan Martin (@TheAngerProfessor)

Guest: Dr. Ryan Martin — Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, anger researcher, and the man behind @TheAngerProfessor.

Anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions in the workplace. We're told to vent, to let it out, to punch a bag — but what if that advice is actually making things worse?

Dr. Ryan Martin joins Al and Leanne to bust the myth of catharsis, unpack what anger really is (and isn't), and share practical, evidence-based strategies for dealing with angry people — from non-complementary responses to knowing when anger can actually be a force for good.

Top 3 Takeaways

Venting doesn't work. The idea that you should "let the anger out" — punching a bag, kicking a printer — has zero evidence behind it. In fact, research shows it can increase aggression and anger in the long term. The catharsis model came from Freud's hydraulic view of emotions, and it's been debunked.
Anger is information. Anger is the emotional desire associated with a goal being blocked. That means it's telling you something important — about what you care about, what's been obstructed, and what needs to change. The goal isn't to never feel angry; it's to respond constructively.
Use non-complementary responses. When someone is angry at you, the natural instinct is to match their energy — anger with anger. Instead, respond in a way that's not complementary: stay calm, stay curious, and ask questions. It disrupts the pattern and opens the door for real conversation.

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript

Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Ryan MartinNice.

Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

Ryan MartinThe idea that that's a good way to let anger out— there's zero evidence that that's a good, healthy way to let anger out. In fact, all the evidence we have says that that's bad for you. It leads to more aggression. They have more long-term problems with anger, and they even have more short-term problems with anger. So they're more likely to be aggressive. They're more likely to have relationship problems. They're more likely to engage in all these things. And this is even true when we do it in experimental-type designs where we bring someone into a lab, we break them into 2 groups. We say, hey, you're going to punch this—

Al ElliottDummy.

Ryan Martinpunching bag for an hour, and then we say the other group— not an hour, but 10 minutes— and we're going to say to this other group, hey, you're gonna, you know, do some other task. We find that the group that's been punching something—

Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.

Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.

Al ElliottYep. Welcome back. Um, noticed a bit of a spike in our analytics recently, so, uh, there's more of you listening. That's good. Thank you for telling people. We do say at the end of it, please subscribe and tell people, and some of you are doing that, so well done. Some of you aren't, so make sure you do. We'll be watching.

Leanne ElliottWe know exactly who's who. We can see you.

Al ElliottSo we have some exciting changes coming soon here at Truth and Lies. Leanne and I have been working on a secret project that's almost ready to share with you. In fact, we'll have a very special announcement— am I— easy for me to say— a very special announcement for you on Monday the 18th of March. So be sure to follow us. All the links to our socials are in the show notes, and also subscribe to the pod because we'll be announcing it on the pod as well. Hopefully you'll be as excited as we are. And not angry, Leanne.

Leanne ElliottYes, today we are talking about anger.

Al ElliottWe are.

Leanne ElliottAngry people. The world is an angry place. It's understandable that we're all a bit more angry. Or are we? Let's find out. In a previous episode last year, our friend, fellow podcaster, and Financial Times journalist Isabel Barrack predicted that anger would be a bit of an issue in 2024.

Al ElliottActually, she did, she did. And I can kind of believe it because when I was younger, I was pretty angry. I remember when I started my first business, I got so frustrated that my printer wasn't working that I kicked it around the car park. Now, to be fair, I was 25 years old, £100K in debt and going bankrupt. But still, I do sometimes worry a little bit for younger Al.

Leanne ElliottBut as a psychologist, emotions are a really important aspect of the human experience, and emotions have always fascinated me. Fascinated me. I reflect on my emotions probably a lot more than I reflect on other people's emotions. Occupational hazard. Uh, but I do also help coaching clients to manage their emotions, especially those that are associated with major life events or career changes like redundancy. But I'm not an expert in this. I'm not an expert in the psychology of emotions. I'm not an expert in anger. I've not made it my life's work. But luckily, our guest today has. So how did I come across our guest today? Well, in most cases, we either get connected to guests or get guest requests, but this was a little bit different. So back in October last year, 2023, I was reading the Psychologist magazine from the British Psychological Society. Yes, I am that nerd and that geriatric millennial. Print, lol. But as I was flicking through, I saw an article called How to Deal with Angry People. And reading on, I was introduced to an awesome psychologist that is also known as the Anger Professor on TikTok, where he has amassed more than 170. thousand followers. So of course we had to have him on the podcast. I am thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Ryan Martin, the Anger Professor. Yes, Dr. Martin has written 2 books, How to Deal with Angry People, which the article I read was inspired by. I have a copy here. It is brilliant, really interestingly written actually. The part one is all about the research into anger, what we can understand about it, and we're going to take you through some of that in the episode today. And then it moves on to 10 strategies for managing angry people, literally how to deal with angry people. So a really great read. That is his most recent book. Dr. Ryan has also written a book called Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change, and spends his time researching why people become angry and how people can use their anger in more productive ways. He has got 2.5 million likes on TikTok videos I'm not sure we have 2. And his psychology podcast, Psychology and Stuff, explores ways to work effectively with angry people. He was trained as a counseling psychologist after graduating in psychology with a minor in criminal justice. Currently a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, he's been featured in the New York Times, the NPR podcast, BBC Radio's Digital Human, And delivered an amazing TED Talk. And now, surely the pinnacle of his media career, he is our latest guest on Truth, Lies and Work.

Al ElliottYes, today you're gonna learn what anger really is, whether our childhood affects it. We've got a psychologist in the room as well as Dr. Rynes. We'll be talking about, about that, the difference between being angry and being an angry person, and some of the 10 techniques that Dr. Rynes has created for dealing with angry people. Oh, and we'll also find out if scientifically Me kicking my printer actually helped me feel less angry. Let's go meet Dr. Ryan Martin.

Ryan MartinI'm Dr. Ryan Martin. I am the dean at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. I'm dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Uh, I've been a psychologist for a very long time, and I research and write about anger.

Al ElliottLet's start with the obvious question: what is anger?

Ryan MartinI guess if we're looking for a concise definition, I would say that anger is The emotional desire associated with having been wronged or treated badly or experiencing some sort of goal blocking that includes a desire to lash out. And so that doesn't mean we have to act on that desire to lash out. It simply means we want— we have that desire to lash out at whatever is in our way or having treated us badly. And that's really important because anger as an emotion is very different from aggression, which is a behavior, right? And so people oftentimes conflate these 2 things. They think that anger, the emotion, is the same as aggression, the behavior, where that behavior is when we actually try to hurt someone or something. Aggression as a behavior, it is sometimes motivated by anger. In fact, maybe even a lot of the time motivated by anger, but it doesn't have to be. There are lots of reasons why people aggress. There's lots of reasons why animals aggress. And sometimes it's anger, sometimes it's another emotion, sometimes it's more instrumental, meaning that aggression exists to solve a problem or for a particular purpose. So when you think about something like war, that is motivated— that is clearly aggression that isn't usually motivated just purely by anger, right? There's political reasons for that. There's all sorts of of reasons for that. If you think about, you know, I live here in northeastern Wisconsin. There are lots and lots of hunters in the region I'm in. They engage in what is ultimately an aggressive act, right, where they're harming deer or duck or whatever. And that isn't motivated by anger. It's motivated by sport. It's motivated by pleasure, usually. So There's a— there's very different motivations for aggression, and so that's why that distinction is so important.

Leanne ElliottIt's a fascinating subject for me as a psychologist, and the research we do at Oblong, our own consultancy, does seem to suggest that we are getting angrier in general and at work. But can we actually scientifically measure this?

Ryan MartinI wish we had a sense for how angry people get over time, um, or, or have been over time. And we don't really have a good way to answer that now because we just don't have that kind of consistent indicator. Now, what we can do is extrapolate from some other pieces of data that are out there, right? We can look at things like frequency of particular types of crimes, right? Aggression-connected crimes. We could look at road rage and whether or not that we've seen increases in that.

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.

Ryan MartinActually, one of the things people oftentimes do is evaluate Twitter posts over time or tweets over time to see, are we seeing shifts there? All of those have their limitations. None of those are perfect indicators, in part because of the difference between anger as an emotion and aggression. And a lot of times those things are actually measuring aggression. So we don't have a clear answer to that. I think the data we have, though, would tell us that people do seem to be getting angrier, that most of those indicators I just mentioned have gotten worse over the last decade. If we were to look at our current situation, some of the things you might see are there's been considerable economic uncertainty for a lot of people. So I think that's led to increases in stress, and those increases tend to exacerbate people's emotional reactivity. So I think we're also seeing more fear, more sadness, and so on. I do think we've also seen a lot of modeling from leaders that tell us that it's okay to— especially, this is especially true in the United States, where I think we've seen a great deal of hostility from elected officials in the last 10 years. Um, that really, um, I, I think send the message that it's okay to express your anger in particular ways.

Leanne ElliottThe headline debate in any of the human sciences is nature versus nurture. Are we born a certain way, or does the world shape us a certain way? I wanted to know, are some people just born angry, or does our childhood and upbringing have a bigger effect on how angry we are as adults?

Ryan MartinIt is a really, really big, complicated question that includes a whole bunch of different variables. So you can think about genetics playing a role, right? And so are there individual differences that you're essentially born with that will predict whether or not you have anger problems or whether or not you experience more anger? It could have something to do with How the brain develops, could have something to do with testosterone levels, things like that. Those are all ways that genetics play a role. There's also the modeling that we get, that we see from our caregivers. And so our upbringing is really going to matter. How was anger expressed? How was anger treated by our— by the people who raised us? What were we rewarded for? What were we punished for? All of those things are going to influence how and what our relationship is with anger. And then even beyond that, say you're just an adult operating in the world, there's all these situational factors that play a role. What is your environment like? Do you experience more provocations than other people? I mean, all of those are factors that can play a role in how angry you get. When I was a kid, I was angry, and I lived with an angry dad, and so I had a lot of modeling in that way too. And so I think a lot of those things led to me wanting to continue to study this and wanting to know more about it and wanting to be able to help other people. who might be dealing with their anger? So when you think about emotional development, there's something that happens that we refer to as display rules. And these are basically a culture's sort of rules for how we should display particular emotions, right? So this is where a lot of that, the culture elements get built in that suggest things like, well, men shouldn't cry, right? That's something women do, et cetera. These are the rules rules that we get. We learn those rules early on when we're young, and then they continue through much of our life, but they don't go away. Like, we continue to kind of get these messages, and our behavior continues to shift over time based on sort of the messages we get from anything from— maybe it's a romantic partner, we're in a new relationship now and not with our caregivers, and that relationship has sort norms about how emotions can or can't be expressed. The other element here that's connected to modeling is what we call emotional contagion. And what it means is that we tend to pick up the emotions of those people around us. So if people around me are angry, I see that and I think there might be something I should be angry about. And so I'm more likely to get angry in that context. And this actually serves— all of these things serve an evolutionary purpose, that emotions exist to kind of ready us for a challenge. And so it's good for me to feel what the people around me are feeling, because if they're mad, maybe I should be mad. If they're scared, maybe there's a threat that I should be scared of. So that's how we sort of pick up these feelings from our surroundings and how a version of modeling can really play a role in our adult life.

Al ElliottNow, Leanne almost never seems angry. I probably get angry once a week.

Leanne ElliottI'm not entirely sure that's true. I don't know. I mean, perhaps when I get angry, you may read it more as frustration. But let's talk about more on that later. First, let's understand the reasons why some people may indeed be angrier than others.

Ryan MartinSo there's pretty significant individual differences, both in how often people get angry, but also in how they tend to express their anger, how intense that anger is expressed. We see pretty wide, broad differences with some people saying they get angry less than once a month, or some other people saying, no, I get angry a couple of times a day. Then there are people who get intensely angry when they get angry, right? They really kind of lose their cool. And then there are other people who don't. And then there's also some people who tend to express that anger outwardly. They may yell, they may scream, they may get aggressive. There are other people who turn it inward.

Leanne ElliottAs a scientist, I'm always looking for a base level, a benchmark, so I can measure the variance. That's what gives us insights into where we need to take action. So what is a typical amount of anger, and can we even measure this?

Ryan MartinThe majority of people will say that they get angry about once a day. So I guess that's kind of the norm. Whether or not that's healthy, Or whether or not that's sort of good for you is really that the devil's in the details there, because a lot of whether or not angry— getting angry is healthy has to do less with frequency, but more with what you do with it, right? How do you express it? Do you express it in a way that causes you or people around you problems? Are you harming yourself? Are you harming others? Are you starting Are you driving dangerously as a result? Are you overeating? Are you— right, there's a gajillion consequences that can come from an angry— a person who gets angry. Because you can get angry one time and get in a physical fight and do harm to yourself or harm to someone else. Or you can get angry all the time and not necessarily experience those consequences.

Al ElliottOkay, so, so far, We know what anger is. We know a little bit about how our genetics and childhood can affect how angry we are. And we know roughly how often the average person gets angry. So is there a difference between someone being angry and an angry person?

Ryan MartinI think what it really comes down to is all human beings get angry. We are all capable of experiencing that emotional state the same way all human beings get scared or all human beings get sad or all human beings get happy. You know, that we're all capable of experiencing those emotional states. However, we also know that there are some people who are just angrier than others. And that part of what's going on for them is that they are just more likely to kind of have that switch flipped, that they're more likely to enter that state frequently. They're more likely to express that anger negatively. They're more likely to experience consequences as a result of their anger. They feel anger more intensely than other people. And I think I would argue that one of the best ways to kind of figure out if you're that person is to pay attention to those consequences. How frequently am I getting into arguments? How frequently am I having relationships disrupted because of my anger? How frequently am I driving dangerously or Maybe in a way that scares the people around me? And if the answer is often, if the answer is, yeah, that's happening for me way more than other people, I think it's fair to say, well, maybe it's you, right? Maybe you are the reason that's happening. There are going to be some people for whom injustice is a real hot button trigger, right? So I have 2 sons. One is older than the other one. The younger one has a pretty hot sort of button for injustice, right? And this is in some ways the result of being the youngest and looking and feeling like, well, this isn't fair, right? This isn't— why does he get to do things I don't get to do? And that's a relatively common phenomenon. I say this also as the youngest, right? So those particular triggers can be important for specific people. I think, like, Sai, there are people who— and because it's going to be tied to other personality characteristics as well. So I tend to be relatively Type A, right? I'm competitive. I like to be productive. I value sort of efficiency and things like that. I try to work through those things. For me, goal blocking is a particular trigger, right? Because whatever that thing is, is standing in the way of me trying to be all those things. Right? If I try and print something out and the printer stops working, that's really frustrating because this is a thing that's supposed to just work and now it's interfering in my goals. And so I think that's where those individual differences come into play.

Al ElliottYou see, printers are definitely the worst way you can spend £150.

Leanne ElliottAlso, I think you fixated on the wrong part here, maybe on that printer. You know, think about what Ryan said there in terms of being the eldest child, which you are. You are the eldest.

Al ElliottI am.

Leanne ElliottElder children seem to experience anger, or their anger is triggered by goal blocking. That printer was literally blocking your goal, as it was—

Al ElliottYou're onto something here, Leanne. I think that you should be a psychologist.

Leanne ElliottWhereas Ryan explained that the youngest child, that's me, tends to be triggered by social injustice. So you said earlier that I don't often get angry. But at least once a day, at least, I will go on a rant about a leader who's being an asshole, an organization that's recruiting a chief data monkey, or some nonsense that I see on LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever else comparing culture to a family. You might read that maybe as passion or frustration, but actually that behavior is a reaction to social injustice, which is probably rooted in anger.

Al ElliottBut as we said, anger is predicted to be the number one problem in the workplace in 2024. So if you're a leader, this is essential reading. So let's take a look at what to do when you are angry or you're dealing with another angry person. I mean, is there even a way to avoid being angry in the first place?

Ryan MartinIf you're going to a meeting and you know people are going to do and say things that are going to frustrate you, or people are— you're going to say things that frustrate other people, you can plan ahead for what they're going to say and you You can sort of practice, right? And think about, well, how am I going to react when so-and-so says this? Or how am I going to react when so-and-so does this? And then once you're a little bit practiced, once you've actually run through those scenarios in your head a few times, it becomes much easier when the actual scenario happens for you to just stay cool and stay calm. And the other side of it is actually reflecting on those moments after the fact. And this feels a little weird to people. They say, well, how does that help? But it helps you for next time. Like, I'm going to think back on this interaction and I'm going to critically evaluate my role in that. And that part's really important because people oftentimes reflect on those things, but they stay totally focused on what the other person did.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Ryan MartinAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.

Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—

Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Ryan MartinSeamless. Seamless.

Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.

Ryan MartinUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good Show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Ryan MartinIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Ryan MartinI am.

Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back.

Ryan MartinDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.

Al ElliottWe'll cut that out.

Ryan MartinKeep that in.

Al ElliottSo what happens if you're a little bit hotheaded, which is the polite way of putting it, like me, and lack the maturity to avoid being angry in the first place? What should I actually do when I feel myself getting angry?

Ryan MartinIn those angry moments, uh, or when those moments when someone's angry at you, I think a lot of different things come up for you, right? Sometimes you want to get revenge. Sometimes, you know, you get scared. A lot of different feelings come up. And one of the best things you can do in those moments is think about, okay, so what, what is my goal right now? What is it that I want to accomplish? And then make that the priority. Because if the goal is, you know, say I'm driving to work and I make a mistake and I make someone mad. And then that, or maybe I don't make a mistake. Maybe I'm just not driving as fast as someone else wants me to, and I make them mad and they start trying to like get back at me or provoke me. In that moment, I can say, you know what, my goal is just to get to work safely or to get my kids to school safely. In which case, the smart thing to do is to back off that person, to get someplace else, even to pull over, to go a different way, whatever, to avoid that person. That's the smart thing to do. to accomplish that goal. Or I can say, I want to get back at this person. And if that becomes the goal, and it shouldn't be, but if that becomes the goal, well, then I engage in a totally different set of behaviors. The same thing could be said if I am provoked by someone at work or someone online and they say something That they're clearly angry with me. I should think about, okay, so what do I want to accomplish here? Do I want to get in a fight with this person publicly? Do I want to convince them they're wrong? Do I want to convince everybody watching that this person is wrong? How do I want to pursue that? And then make that the priority because there's different tactics you're going to use in all of those different situations. What you do if you want to prove— if you want to get into a fight and actually embarrass the person is different than if you want to try and convince everyone watching that they're wrong. And so those are different tactics, and you got to be thinking about those. When it's clear there is no resolution that can be accomplished, meaning I can't— this is just where we're at. We're going to have to either agree to disagree or just move on because this person's mad at me and nothing I can do seems to change that. And so it's smart to just back away and be done with this. A variation of that is when we're not safe, when this person is an actual literal threat to us. And I think you can take both of those same principles and you can apply them to the longstanding relationship as well and say, I am in this relationship. This person is not willing to change. They are not able to change. This relationship is not good for me, or I don't feel safe in this relationship because of this person's anger, and therefore I need to find a way to disengage. I think the thing that's really important for people to hear, though, is that disengaging from those relationships doesn't necessarily mean cutting off contact completely. They'll say, I spend time with them, but only sort of for big events and only in small doses. So it's like for holidays, I'll go over there for about an hour, and then the rest of the time I kind of disengage. They also tell me oftentimes they're sort of explicit about that. One person I talked to said, hey, my dad's anger is a real problem. I still want a relationship with my mom. So I have been explicit with them that, hey, I'm coming over here. I'm uncomfortable in these situations. I'm really doing it because I want to continue to have a relationship with mom, but I need to disengage a little bit in this way. So it can look a lot of different ways, and there are variations of how healthy those things can be.

Leanne ElliottI don't want to go on about this printer, Al. I do feel like I'm triggering you, but I am curious, when you did kick the shit out of that printer around the car park, Did you feel any better?

Al ElliottNot really, because part of me is like, I know I have to go and buy another printer and that's £150 and that annoyed me. And then the other part was like, I was just wearing trainers, I think, at the time. So I'd probably got, I know, probably broken a toe or something.

Leanne ElliottSo, good tip. If you do want to kick a printer, get some teal, teal steel-capped toe boots. Steel-toe boots.

Al ElliottSteel-capped toe boots. Yes, that's right.

Leanne ElliottWell, I mean, the good news, Al, is actually that's completely normal that you didn't feel any better from it. In fact, Dr. Ryan's research has found that letting out your anger by punching or kicking or any of that physical frustration stuff doesn't really work.

Ryan MartinIt took off with Freud, who really had this like hydraulic model for how human emotions worked and the belief that we have to let out steam in order to, uh, deal with our, uh, our anger, right? Otherwise we'd explode. Sort of a pressure cooker type of mentality. Freud, for all of the ways in which he was wrong, uh, still had a pretty profound impact on the field of psychiatry and the fields of psychiatry and psychology. And so we're still living with that impact. Um, and, and it has I think part of the problem is it feels like it's accurate, right? It feels like that should be true, right? Why not? Why don't I have to let it out somewhere? And so it feels like it should be true in that way. The other part of it is that typically when people do sort of explode and break things or whatever, they feel good. They feel better afterwards. So it feels like it helps that way too. I'll just give you an example. I had to take a load of stuff to the dump recently, right? And we just filled up the back of my minivan and went to the dump. At one point, I just decided I'm going to see how far I can throw this 2x4. And I did. And it was oddly satisfying. It felt really good to just throw this thing as far as I could into the dump. And I think that's true for a lot of people. It feels good. Therefore, it must work. But of course, overeating probably feels good, right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good, productive way of dealing with emotions. Substances like alcohol and other drugs feel good. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're good, healthy ways of coping. There's lots of things that feel good that don't necessarily make those things good for us. And what we— so I think that also adds to this problem or this perception problem. The reason we know it's not good is because the people who do it frequently, the people who are taught to do it frequently, they have more long-term problems with anger, and they even have more short-term problems with anger. So they're more likely to be aggressive. They're more likely to have relationship problems. They're more likely to engage in all these things. And this is even true when we do it in In experimental-type designs where we bring someone into a lab, we break them into 2 groups. We say, hey, you're going to punch this punching bag for an hour. And then we say to the other group— not an hour, but 10 minutes— and we're going to say to this other group, hey, you're going to do some other task. We find that the group that's been punching something, they end up being more aggressive and more angry after that than they were before.

Al ElliottSo let's just talk about anger in other people. Let's say I've got someone at work who is angry. What should I be doing?

Ryan MartinThere's this phenomenon that we talk about in psychology referred to as non-complementary responses, right? And so, because what that means is we tend to match each other's emotions. This is that emotional contagion piece. So if I'm in a meeting and people are getting elevated and they start to yell, I'm more likely, or just raise their voice or whatever, I'm more likely to actually match that emotional response by raising my voice, by Sort of potentially getting elevated as well. That's the complementary response. The non-complementary response is for me to do the opposite, is for me to lower my voice, is for me to speak a little more calmly. And what we see is that that ends up having the impact of deescalating them. And so a big piece of it is going back to that, finding ways to stay calm in the moment. can play a really positive role there. The other thing that I tend to do in those situations is I'm a pretty big advocate for transparency, but including transparency surrounding how I might be feeling in a particular moment. And so at a certain point, I might actually say, hey, I'm actually starting to get a little frustrated with the direction we're going right now. Can we back up for a second and talk about this?

Leanne ElliottOften one of the misconceptions of emotions, especially more negative emotions, is that they're not useful or that they hinder performance. But actually, an emotion like fear, for example, does have a use in protecting us from harm or keeping us safe. But what about anger? Can anger ever be useful?

Ryan MartinI think sometimes anger can be really— can have a team-building effect, meaning if If we're all angry at the same people or in the same way, it can really build camaraderie that way. So sometimes a leader's anger might actually drive that sort of team building. That's a time where it might actually be smart to be a little bit performative in your anger to try and build that sense of community. Elected officials motivate with anger. with fear. Those are approaches that have long been used by political candidates and I think are being used more often. And there's even— so there's a study, it's a little bit older study at this point, but still relevant, that people are twice as likely to click on an angering political ad than they are a more neutral political ad. And so if you're a campaign manager, it is actually stupid not to make people angry, right? You've just doubled the value of your ad by making it anger-inducing. And so there's a real clear goal there, a reason, a rationale for why you should be trying to increase anger. I would even take it a step further. We know that anger is one of of the most, if not the most, viral emotions, meaning content spreads online much faster if it's anger-inducing. And so from that perspective, it is smart to try and make people angry in those moments.

Al ElliottNow, big surprise for you, I'm no psychologist. But I've been told that our behavior is influenced by what brings us pleasure or pain. Now, of course, this is massively simplifying the world of human psychology. But if we get angry a lot, does that mean we like being angry? Does that mean that being angry brings us pleasure?

Ryan MartinPeople like being angry, that it can feel really powerful to some people. It can help some people get what they want. And they may not necessarily think about it that way. But they might use their anger as a way of manipulating people, either by— oftentimes by scaring people. And so, and then also sometimes it's— there's this sort of this righteous rage that can emerge for people that feels really good. And so in that sense, I, you know, I'd be cautious about calling it addictive, but I can say all of those positive outcomes, all those positive experiences make people happy to be feeling it and wanting to feel it more often, or even sort of intentionally trying to feel it. And so I think in that sense, yeah, I mean, it's something that people can sort of cling to.

Leanne ElliottThat's a blast from the past, that, Al, the pain-pleasure principle, a classic psychoanalytical theory actually, first introduced by Sigmund Freud back in 1890 when he published the interpretation of dreams.

Al ElliottNice.

Leanne ElliottUm, yeah, I mean, it doesn't do a great job of explaining human motivation, to be fair, beyond infancy. And it does also kind of forget to consider that an individual's perception of pain might differ, uh, or indeed of pleasure might be different. Um, but there you go. Hey, it's Freud. It's a classic. I mean, Freud, to be fair, doesn't have the best reputation in modern psychology in terms of the accuracy of his ideas. Um, but he sure did ask some interesting questions.

Al ElliottYeah, to be fair, my pain pleasure comes from the yogurt advert from the '90s where it's about pain and pleasure. But anyway, so before I did yoga—

Leanne ElliottInterestingly, that, that, that theory is most used in marketing. Um, so yeah, so there you go.

Al ElliottInteresting. Well, that's, that's why I know about it. Anyway, what else you got, Lee?

Leanne ElliottUh, well, the thing is, I am much more interested in finding out about the psychology of emotions and human behavior in the 21st century. So I wondered if there was anything that Dr. Ryan's research found that was surprising?

Ryan MartinI think one of the things that probably surprises people the most is the nature of gender differences when it comes to anger, because people have, I think, a myth about anger. A pretty prominent myth is the idea that men are angrier than women. And while there's tons of evidence that says that men tend to express their anger in particular ways that are different from how women express their anger, There isn't necessarily a difference in who's getting angry. That what we see is that they get angry at approximately the same frequency. Men and women also experience anger in a similar intensity, but men tend to express it outwardly— yelling, screaming, hitting things. Women tend to express it inwardly. You know, social withdrawal, suppression, maybe even crying, things like that. And so that— and that's rooted also in upbringing and modeling and those display rules that I mentioned, that women tend to get messages about how they should internalize their emotions. They shouldn't express them outwardly. Men tend to get messages, or boys and men tend to get messages about expressing their anger outwardly. So I think that's a pretty common myth surrounding anger. But probably the most common myth surrounding anger is the idea that catharsis, or like the aggressive expression of anger, punching a pillow, punching a punching bag, breaking things, the idea that that's a good way to let anger out. There's zero evidence that that's a good, healthy way to let anger out. In fact, all the evidence we have says That, that's bad for you. It leads to more aggression later on. It leads to more intense anger later on. And we should find other ways of dealing with anger than that.

Al ElliottSo obviously, Leanne came across Dr. Ryan in her nerdy magazine and then found him on TikTok and had a watch of some of his stuff on TikTok and then bought the book. And now he's on the show. So it just goes to prove that TikTok is not all boobs and whatnot. With your TikTok, all boobs and whatnot? Yes, when I open it up, I just see asses. So I don't know quite what I've been looking at before. Maybe, maybe that does say more about me than it does about TikTok. Now we're thinking of doing a little bit more on TikTok, so we wanted to know how Dr. Ryan got started.

Ryan MartinI think in my, in my mind, all it was was sort of entertaining humor, dancing, stuff like that. That's what I thought TikTok was. Decided to check it out. And one of the things I discovered is that there were really good, interesting people there, oftentimes scientists trying to educate. Well, maybe this is something— I mean, we talked earlier about the catharsis myth. We talk about how people don't necessarily understand what anger is. And I thought maybe this is a venue where I can try and clarify some myths for people about what anger is, what it's not, best ways to express it, and so on. And so I decided, well, let's give it a go. And I think maybe for the first month or so, I felt like I was just shouting into an abyss. No one was paying attention at all. And so I put a video out and maybe one person would see it, maybe 2. And then over time, all of a sudden things started to increase a little bit. And then I think part of why I continued with it and why I moved at a certain point over to Instagram, is because people started to tell me how much it was helping. And that's almost, honestly, that's sort of always been my goal as a psychologist, is to think about the ways. It's ultimately the same reason I wrote the book, right? Is I want people to have a healthier relationship with their emotions. And this is, there's lots of different ways we can kind of share that information out with people. And I believe in meeting people where they're at. And if they're on TikTok or they're on Instagram, then we should try and share with them there. The other thing I would say is if all of the well-trained, smart, thoughtful psychologists decide, nope, this isn't the venue for me, then we're giving that space up to people who are pseudo-psychologists, right? Pseudo-scientists. And that's not healthy either. And so Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is there tons of misinformation there? Absolutely. I don't know that the solution is to say, well, let's pull all the good information, right, and, and not have that be present there.

Leanne ElliottWhat Dr. Ryan just said there is so, so, so important, and we discussed it with Professor John Amici last week. Social media is great, but it also allows non-experts to position themselves as experts, which can be damaging. One of the ways to work out if somebody is legit is to see if they've written a book. And spoiler, Dr. Ryan's written 2.

Ryan MartinIt's funny, I had a conversation with my editor at one point, and we were talking, and for whatever reason, when I started writing the book, I didn't— when I started writing my first book, I didn't necessarily want to think of it as a self-help book. And she asked me why. And I said, well, because You know, ultimately, I want people to go to therapy. If they need help, I want them to go to therapy. And her response was, Ryan, not everybody can afford therapy. And she's not wrong. And this is a flaw, at least in the American healthcare system, and probably in lots of other healthcare systems as well. Not everybody can afford the kind of help that they need. And so then it becomes a question of, is this book, it's probably not good enough to help a person who has a serious anger problem, but can it help a little? And I'd say the same, and I believe it can. I think that for people who maybe their problems aren't quite as critical, I think it'll help.

Al ElliottSo Leah's reading the book, she's sitting in the corner and chuckling to herself. And I was like, a book about anger? I'm not sure you should necessarily be laughing. So what made you laugh, Leah?

Leanne ElliottIt genuinely is a funny book. But my favorite bits and the funny bits were the footnotes. So, Dr. Ryan, I asked him about this, and he actually said that he took inspiration from the author Mary Roach, who fills her books with funny footnotes.

Ryan MartinI think the first time I read one of her books, I wasn't reading them at first because I didn't realize that they were sort of woven into the narrative the way they were. And I ended up going back once I realized, oh, these are great. I went back and reread some of But ultimately, I mean, I think the reason to go even deeper, the reason why I like that is because it's actually both my books are written in the same style that I teach, which is a combination of stories and science and some tangents. And those footnotes are tangents, right? It's the little moments that I sort of depart from class content to, to share sort of a silly related story.

Al ElliottSo there you have it, your introduction to anger and dealing with angry people. We highly recommend you go and buy Dr. Ryan's book and go and follow him on all the socials. Um, his content is really brilliant. The links are in the show notes.

Leanne ElliottI hope that you've enjoyed this episode and maybe have a better understanding of anger and angry people. I know that for me, when I read Dr. Ryan's book and got introduced to some of his ideas, it really helped me with my reflection, my self-awareness, and also giving us a vocabulary that we sometimes need to communicate with our, our other half maybe on what triggers us and what makes, makes us angry. If you do have any stories around this that you're able to share, then I would love to chat with you on LinkedIn. Just search for Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture, um, and You'll see me there. Well, you'll see Al and I, but it's me really. Al's never on LinkedIn.

Al ElliottThey're far too busy kicking printers.

Leanne ElliottHe's looking at boobs on TikTok.

Al ElliottThat's exactly what I'm doing. Well, why wouldn't you? Join us next week for more workplace psychology with the incredible and loquacious Rory Sutherland. Rory is Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Mather— Mather, I should know how to say that— Ogilvy Mather, and 10 years ago founded the Behavioural Science Unit at Ogilvy He has since written a book called Alchemy: The Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense and has appeared on many podcasts, including Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO. Steve, we're coming for you, son.

Leanne ElliottYes, looking very much looking forward to seeing how you're gonna fit 2 hours worth of interview into 40 minutes there, Al, but I have every faith that you will. Before we go, we can't leave you without telling you how to find out a bit more about Dr. Ryan.

Ryan MartinYeah, you can find me, uh, @AngerProfessor on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also go to alltheragescience.com to find more about me personally. Also check out my books there. And then, you know, there's, like I said, a gajillion resources on that website as well. So I've been managing it for a long time, so there's lots and lots and Lots of anger management tips and recent research and things like that.

Leanne ElliottThank you so much to our incredible guest, Dr. Ryan Martin. The people we get on this show, honestly, it's amazing. We will be back next week with another incredible guest. In the meantime, don't forget that Water Cooler is coming up in April. There is a link in the show notes. You can get your tickets. It's a 2-day event and it's completely, completely free.

Al ElliottYes. And if you enjoy this episode, then we would really appreciate you supporting us by clicking that subscribe button. It does really make a huge, huge difference to us. We've, as you can tell, we put a lot of time and effort into this and so do our guests. So it'd be really, really helpful, but also helps you as well because it means that all your future episodes can be downloaded directly and you'll never miss another amazing guest.

Leanne ElliottWhich is particularly important this week because we've got that announcement coming.

Al ElliottWe have, we have. So look out for that and we will see you Bye-bye.

Ryan MartinBye-bye.

Leanne ElliottAnd we discussed this with Professor— we discussed this with Professor— I get flustered. Need to write a book before we go on TikTok then.

Al ElliottYeah, I'll do one this afternoon.

Ryan MartinOkay.

Leanne ElliottI used to have that book somewhere.

Al ElliottWhich one?

Leanne ElliottInterpretation of Dreams.

Ryan MartinDid you?

Al ElliottHuh. Always, it's always, it's always like you're going to come into money or you're worried about something.

Leanne ElliottYeah, you fancy mum. Hey guys, hey guys, you just get out of the water.

Al ElliottIt's a shark, straight 21.

Leanne ElliottIt's a snake, snake.