If true, wouldn’t this undermine the entire psychiatric approach of behavioral cognitive therapy and ideas such as confronting one’s fears and talking through problems?
From TFA: “chatting with friends can bring closure when they help you reconstrue an event, rather than just recount it. What does that look like? Asking why you think the other person acted that way, prodding to see whether there’s anything to be learned from it all, and just generally broadening your perspective to ‘the grand scheme of things.’ Unfortunately, this type of meaning-making is far from common outside of therapy”
Article also mentioned the “The thoughts you water are the ones that grow" idiom.
CBT is often about reframing or "reconstrueing" a negative or damaging viewpoint into something less emotionally charged. Venting is just watering and reinforcing the emotionally charged pathways -- the "gasoline on a fire" analogy.
I went through a Veterans Administration course of CBT and In Vivo Exposure Therapy and it was nothing like the "primal scream" therapies I did in the 90's that you may be thinking of. I thought "venting" was disproven to work in the late last century. That said, anything that interrupts a looping thought process is good. I've gone to the beach and rolled around in the cold pounding surf just to reset my head.
CBT is nearly the opposite of venting. Venting is just pouring out raw emotion, no confrontation.
Venting is "John is an asshole who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag. I hope that fucker's entire dick just falls off. He doesn't deserve jack shit."
CBT is more measured. You acknowledge the feeling, but you separate yourself from it. "Yes, I'm mad. I'm mad because of THING. THING upsets me because I believe it should be like THIS. My options are THESE."
Venting is letting your emotions drive your actions. CBT is letting your reason temper your emotion. You control your actions in spite of your emotions.
"Confronting one's fears" is usually about forcing yourself to accept and internalize that your fears are unfounded. Good examples are a fear of roller coasters, fear of flying, or basically anything else that is 99.999% harmless.
Talking through problems is way to guide you (and potentially another person) into understanding, acceptance, and compromise.
Stop using small sample sized studies done on college campuses (n = 600, 178, 60) to push clickbait headline articles.
Sounds like saying, "Don't cry when you're sad it Doesn't Work"
How about let people do what they want? People vent because they want to know they aren't crazy or at fault. Not because they're trying to be calm or forget grievances.
When I bang my thumb with a hammer I yell FUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK as loud as I can, are you telling me that doesn't make the pain less? I'm almost 100% certain that form of catharsis works. It even works in reverse for me, if I'm having a moment of intense emotional strain, punching the wall (also yelling fuck as loud as possible) resets my brain. To say catharsis doesn't work seems to be a limitation of the definition of catharsis in these studies.
As for releasing intense emotional strain - you're more likely to lash out.
Have you tried not punching the wall and have a time out instead? Because people who "punch the wall" are, according to multiple studies, more likely to lash out and be abusive.
> Because people who "punch the wall" are, according to multiple studies, more likely to lash out and be abusive.
Presumably the wall-punching and tendency toward other physical/emotional abuses are tied to one or more underlying common causes.
That is, people shouldn't be told to punch a wall (for cartharsis) or even necessarily not to do so (because it'll make you abusive), but those for whom that is a temptation or tendency should seek assistance to uncover and address the root causes.
I guess that's my point, how do you disentangle the need for cathartic outburst from the negative connotations and actual perhaps small positive impact of the cathartic outburst? Is practicing karate and punching boards on a schedule ok?
I feel like it's different when it's a scheduled, planned release, rather than losing control in the moment.
Like, my overall emotional regulation is way better on the weeks when I've been more active, with cycling, lane swimming, taking walks, etc. And I'm certainly not doing those things "in anger", but it's still absolutely a kind of release.
Of course, the article is mostly talking about venting as a scheduled, planned thing too, so I don't know.
Have you had what you would consider an extreme event which didn't ripple beyond a need to maintain regular exercise? One time I was upset because my now wife decided to spend time with friends instead of with me on the last day before I drove off to grad school across the country. I rode my bike around a large lake (not something I would normally do). Is that somehow doing it wrong? It seems like the whole issue is "don't rock the boat or people will look at you sideways and make you an outcast". Works fine to be and express yourself in a safe place (accepting people/sound-proof walls), even if its peakish at times, just my experience.
I have been going through some significant personal issues over the past year, and finding productive outlets for processing those feelings/emotions/etc was indeed the genesis for getting more serious about a fitness routine.
But now that I'm there, it's clear that this really is a helpful long-term pattern to follow for mental well-being, quite apart from being now in my mid-30s and needing to actually be intentional about staying in shape.
Please explain? Pain is both processed physically and psychologically in my experience. Is the suggestion that if I feel pain psychologically I'm abnormal? Catharsis is a name given to a human action as old as time.
> Because people who "punch the wall" are, according to multiple studies, more likely to lash out and be abusive.
I would be curious to see the studies, perhaps people who lash out are more likely to have issues worth punching a wall over? All sorts of biases could come into play.
> Have you tried not punching the wall and have a time out instead?
The times I've punched a wall are too few to derive meaningful statistics vs other methods of unwinding.
Yelling at the time of physical pain is plain reaction, it's not catharsis... specially not in this context. It's not a violent release of pent up emotions.
The article reads as though its author has a vested interest in protecting some status quo that people complain about a lot. Like they just can't stand hearing people vent because they hate being reminded that people are unhappy.
To piggyback, until psychology has a repeatable theoretical model; it's hard to take conclusions like this seriously. It needs to become married with neurology. ie We need to see this happening from a biological perspective. A small sample of surveys is not good enough to form strong conclusions. Otherwise, the results and conclusions feel arbitrary.
"Researchers first criticized essays written by the study participants and then told some of them to hit a punching bag. Afterward, they gave them all an opportunity to blast loud noise at the person who had insulted their writing. People in the bag-hitting groups reported experiencing more anger and were more likely to blast noise than those who did nothing."
This does sound like a selection bias and priming.
You have a group of people who are criticised.
Some of those people are told to do something physically violent.
All were then told to push a button to blast a noise.
Blasting a noise is a mild aggression. Hitting a punching bag is much more aggressive. It's no surprise that the group primed for violence reported more anger and was more primed to the milder form of aggression.
Also how did the people hit the bag? Did any resist and needed encouragement. Did they punch it full force or just tap it so they could get their reward and leave?
There is no way this study can draw conclusions on people who are victims of sustained physical and emotional trauma. It only proves that people who had college essays criticised are more likely to press the beep button and feel angry if they're forced to punch a punching bag.
edit - I am biased. I endured a tough childhood with bipolar parents, physical and emotional abuse was involved. I know there is a venting trap where you can get comfortable and wallow, but that's like finding a local minima, without any form of catharsis you never heal, with undirected catharsis you get stuck, but catharsis coupled with guidance and reinforcement really does help.
> The studies of behavioral priming that I had cited in the chapter were largely discredited in the famous replication crisis of psychology... behavioral priming research is effectively dead.
Dang, I read that book not long ago, the priming narrative is also pretty strong in marketing etc. I'll have to brush up on the subject before I bring it up again.
Though if priming is dead, it seems interesting the people who punched the bag seemed angrier or more vindictive afterwards according to the OP study.
Our prefrontal cortex [which plays critical role in cognition, emotional regulation, and control of impulsive behavior] doesn't come fully online until you are about 24 (!). Given that, I take all studies done on university campuses with students younger than 24 with a good spoonful of salt.
On the other hand, if these sorts of cathartic expressions of anger did reliably "work" at dissipating anger, I would expect it to show up in even small samples of college students? For it not to show up, either the effect only shows up in certain circumstances or it's actually not very strong.
Quite frankly, almost all psychological experiments are nonsense. After the replication crisis and other things (e.g. p-hacking) I simply can't be bothered to take the field seriously. I am beyond mad at the intellectual dishonesty many sciences have committed, social psychology in particular. I couldn't care less if it's an emergent failing of science. First principles were not followed, too few people cared, I can't ever trust the fields again that took part in this.
I'll stick to forms of science that actually know something worthwhile. And when I need to intuit anything about human behavior, then I know that I am on my own.
With that said, here's my criteria for a study I'm willing to take seriously:
* n = 10000
* The effect size is big
* It's measured in at least on western, one eastern and one other culture
* It's independently reproduced by at least 2 other independent universities/research institutes
There are probably another few things, but I think you get the spirit.
I get the downvotes, I understand. I stand by it. I did a 3 year bachelor in it and some select master courses. There are still some theories that I use and find useful (self-determination theory and the five factor model if personality). I use those theories to make my life better. I use the theories of clinical psychology in very rare cases to tell people that a conversation with the doctor might help and won’t do any harm (in The Netherlands at least, in my experience). I can’t rely on clinical theories more than that though because the science of it is too vague.
Relying on psychological theories becomes problematic when the results are like normal studies (e.g. n = 100). A benign example: I am sure that the overjustification effect and self-determination theory have a link. In both bodies of literature I have never seen that link being investigated. If it would be investigated then there is a chance that the effect might be rebranded to something else in the name of precision. IMO it seems to be used too often as a euphemism to carve out your own research space.
Most cognitive biases are not substantiated enough to be relied upon as psychological theories (there was a good HN post about this as well). And for me, that’s problematic and something to get angry about because media but also university professors tell with too much confidence that these ideas are true and are the best knowledge we currently have. I found personally, that I can better rely on how humans work by using my own mind (a combination of common sense and experience for edge cases).
Science should be about uncovering what is true, as best as it possibly can. When it comes to the field of psychology, I feel that spirit has been mostly lost.
Feel free to disagree, but if you do then I ask you: have you tried to rely on psychological theories to improve your life and take their advice to heart? If not, then you might want to give it a try. And I hope that it has a more positive effect on you than it did on me. The effect on me has an amazing silver lining but ultimately it is very bitter sweet. Contrast this with computer science which was painful but ultimately delightfully sweet because most of what was taught can be programmed into a computer and is therefore true (at least, true on some level).
It sounds like the aggressive behavior was measured pretty soon after hitting the punching bag. It would be interesting to run the test again after the adrenaline has worn off.
I don't think proponents of catharsis are claiming that screaming at a tree if going to instantly make you calmer, it's that later that day you might feel better.
Also, participants were instructed to focus their anger on the perpetrator of the criticism, whereas it's probably healthier and more effective to simply focus on releasing your aggression.
Or, a combo study would be interesting where participants are instructed to hit a punching bag and then try to empathize with themselves or others, vs. only trying to empathize.
Anyway, it's an interesting study, but I'm not sure I'd rule out catharsis just yet.
I know catharsis was extremely helpful in my grieving process.
Realistically, I'm not sure how you would even design a study to accurately measure the effects. Any sort of cathartic experience would necessarily be self-reported and we all know the accuracy of self-report studies.
For the value of an anecdote: in my grieving process, I tried several forms of catharsis: hitting a heavy bag, yelling, running and biking angry. In every case, it made me more angry. I got worse. The anger turned inward. It wasn't until I stopped that approach that I made any progress in my grief.
> Any sort of cathartic experience would necessarily be self-reported and we all know the accuracy of self-report studies.
That's not true. In the article, they mention observational studies wherein folks who vent are more likely to lash out. That isn't self-reporting.
> Since the students weren’t randomly assigned to either vent or not, it’s possible that the most anxious are the ones who chose to vent (so that venting was correlated with increased anxiety, not the cause of it)
I'm glad it helped your grieving process, and a big yes to the reality of "this is hard to study".
I have an intuition that catharsis as part of a grief process might be quite different (more useful) than in situations where the anger arises out of other circumstances.
I've seen someone close to me have some kind of a cathartic process and get a lot better. It also required finally facing (at least some of) their emotional blocks or trauma, so it's not like venting alone did much of anything. But I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't got the opportunity to air a lot of their previously suppressed feelings in emotional safety, the rest of it also wouldn't have happened.
I don't think aggressive venting alone is going to do much, but whenever I come across one of these studies that purport to show catharsis as not existing, I can't avoid feeling there must be more to the story.
Some people are also going to interpret "catharsis/venting does not work" as meaning it's perfectly wise to not listen with actual empathy and just slam solutions at people instead. But that also doesn't work.
Tbf, this study only examines catharsis as it relates to anger, not grief. Those emotions involve different networks in the brain, so it's perfectly plausible that catharsis would work differently.
No, just anecdotally I've seen it work for other people and it's worked for me at times as well. But that's not to say some other method wouldn't have worked just as well. And "worked" is a loose term, that just means "happier and less angry", rather than some form of perfection.
I think this begs the question in assuming there is just one type of catharsis. In my experience, things like this can be done productively or unproductively, effectively or ineffectively. It's all about the execution, and different people use the same word for different things.
Anecdata but a good boxing session after a stressful workday always makes me feel better. High intensity running also works. Great for relieving various undirected frustrations. Especially of the angry kind.
Writing in a journal does wonders for the more subtle things. When your mind is running in circles trying to process something. The act of writing it out helps me avoid circles and get to a conclusion.
The only thing that never does much is bottling it up inside.
It definitely seems likely that physical activity is beneficial. I'd be curious to see studies comparing something like running vs. boxing. (Also weightlifting vs. cardio, or springs vs. long-distance.)
Additionally, one thing that's often obscured in studies (or the reporting thereof) is that different people are different. Studies say that running doesn't help people lose weight, but that's looking for significant effects across a population. For some individuals, it does. The concept of "ymmv" is incredibly important when you care about individual impacts.
I almost never engage in catharsis now, but I do go on half marathon runs when I'm stressed. They're not the same thing... as like yelling at my husband over random annoyances.
Almost 100 comments as of me adding mine, and you're the first to mention journaling so I have to chime in. It's better than some therapy I've had. Therapy can of course be hugely helpful if/when you find a decent therapist, but writing things down really is the next best thing.
I haven't felt the need to do it in years, since I replaced it with a concise log which doesn't usually get bogged down in details. Mostly because I purged the majority of my worst freakouts into text files no one else is likely to read years ago. This wasn't the only thing that helped me, but it was at least half of it.
I'm not persuaded that those who "stop venting" end up happier in the long run. It seems like a road to letting yourself be mashed down and convincing yourself that you lack power to change your circumstances.
I'm glad that Malcolm X didn't pay attention to all the people who wished he'd "stop venting".
There's also this implicit conclusion that venting must not work if the levels of aggression don't change, but the article did say that blood pressure dropped. I thought the paragraphs on venting to friends didn't make much sense to me either--honestly, if something terrible happened to a friend, and they didn't vent to me about it, at least a little, I'd be wondering if we were still friends.
As an aside, I'd be curious to see the effects of venting on the subject as well as people that surround them. I'd also be curious to see the effects during a one-time episode and through repeated exposure.
I say that, because one of the worst things about social media is the venting. It's almost like folks are trying to suck you into a weird codependent relationship with them.
There's a saying "the squeeky wheel get's the grease".
People usually do what works for them. thats exactly why we still see fist fights, disinformation, yelling, racisim, war, complaining, etc. It does what it was intended to do. Otherwise, people would do something else.
This is your 3rd post in the thread, alleging that catharsis doesn't work.
Now, personally, I don't have skin in the game, so I can't tell you whether it works or not.
But the fact that you're citing a 1967 psych study done on 9 year old kids tells me you have some kind of agenda for whatever reason. Not only are most psych studies flat out junk, but the 50s and 60s was the time of particularly egregious junk science. Remember, that's the time they still did lobotomies.
Besides, the study you cited only limits itself to cathartic aggression, which is clearly not the only case for the experience.
I can link you to another bunch. Because I took interest on the subject. I've been told to "vent" almost all of my life and only a few years ago I got exposed to this research.
I'm citing one of the earlier ones and there's plenty of newer studies.
My "allegations" are based in research and not empty words(unlike the accusations in your comment)
It's pretty incredible how few comments in this thread are saying "huh, this is interesting, I should try this, research backs it up." That's the engineer or HN way, isn't it? (Not being sarcastic, I include myself in this). When data comes along which disproves or at least weakens a previously held position, adjust your priors and try it out.
Note: you can say "not until it's proven" but I can cite plenty of less weakly supported positions than "catharsis doesn't work" that have been enthusiastically taken up here. Consider trusting the data, at least a little bit, especially if you have a strongly emotional, but not well supported, response. This is the way (of the engineer).
"Stop Venting" doesn't just "work" either. Processing your emotions and letting go of them does. David Hawkins' book, aptly named 'Letting Go,' covers this in detail.
> The idea of venting can be traced as far back as Aristotle, but Freud is the one who really popularized the notion of catharsis. Most of what we assume about the need to “let it out” comes from his assertions about the danger of unexpressed feelings. In the “hydraulic model,” frustration and anger build up inside you and, unless periodically released in small bursts, cause a massive explosion. Starting in the 1960s, this theory was debunked by so many lab experiments that researcher Carol Tavris concluded in 1988, “It is time to put a bullet, once and for all, through the heart of the catharsis hypothesis.”
I think there is some truth to the original theory, but not all "venting" is equal. I definitely have at times experienced growing resentment towards people in my life due to not fully confronting the feelings I had about my interactions with them, but in general I don't think that angry outbursts are a healthy way to deal with this. In an ideal relationship (general term, not necessarily "romantic relationship"), I think honest but empathetic and non-judgmental conversations between the parties is often going to be the only way to truly alleviate those feelings; being able to tell someone why you were hurt by their actions without judging them and then being able to hear the same without reacting defensively is much more effective than complaining to a third party, but it requires a level of trust and understanding that is usually not going to be present for anything but close family members or long time friends. Given that, I think there is value in talking through the issues with a neutral third party, but it can be hard to avoid falling into spiral of anger and resentment, which I think is why seeing a therapist or psychologist is such a common treatment. I don't think that being able to neutrally help someone deal with their feelings of anger or resentment is some kind of superpower or anything, but like any skill, there are some methods that are more effective and some that are less effective, so having some sort of training on the matter generally is helpful. Most importantly though, they still need to build that same level of trust and understanding with the patient, which I think is the most common reason that therapy isn't able to help some people; if you're not open to the idea of learning to trust and get helped in therapy, it's going to be hard to actually resolve anything.
Venting totally CAN work in customer support situations. You let someone pour out confusing and undirected anger/fear/frustration and then you get to work solving the underlying problem or pain point.
Venting isn't for catharsis; It's for seeking validation. When you vent TO someone and they lend a sympathetic ear, it's a huge help.
Venting is a social bonding ritual.
You generally don't get this online because most of the audience is NOT sympathetic, so you'll get criticism after criticism, making things even worse.
Yes it's a communicative act. Communication can be bounced off others
for social validation as you say, but can also be to oneself.
You'd still vent, if alone on a desert island, maybe to The Gods.
Ever hear yourself saying out loud, usually with expletives, something
that you would "never say"? Listen to that voice!
That's communication of unconscious but frustrated thoughts. Sometimes
it has to come out verbally because ones inner dialogue isn't strong
enough due to social or superego suppression.
After you said it to yourself you feel better.
We are not the singular identities simpler minds suppose us.
There are lots of sympathetic audiences online too— see relationship or parenting vents on tiktok, where the comments are often just wall-to-wall supportive, with crown emojis, slogans like "SLAYYYY!" etc. Twitch "just chatting" streams can be like this sometimes too.
But I do wonder how much of it actually lands for the recipient. As an influencer putting out a carefully curated image of yourself, how meaningful is it to be boosted by a bunch of mostly-anonymous strangers? Wouldn't it just feed into a kind of dissociative thing where you recognize that they're praising and lifting up a mask and have no idea about the particulars of the real person's struggles? I don't know.
Anger usually stems from a boundary being violated. It's our instinctive evolved response for pushing back against someone who has encroached on us.
When we "vent" to a peer, it is relieving because it transfers that personal boundary to a group boundary. We feel "OK, my peer will now back me up the next time this happens."
Venting is like yelling for reinforcements when you see someone storming your corner of the castle wall.
Exactly, thank you! This article just read so bizarre to me - who thinks that venting is supposed to change your opinion about the matter? It felt like reading a headline like, "Researchers find that cardio vascular exercise doesn't help increase shoe size"
That's not what it's for. It's for getting thoughts out of your head, having the opportunity to articulate strong feelings that might otherwise be fuzzy, and for feeling heard and supported.
If changing your opinions is the goal, venting is pretty clearly not the way to get there.
One of the most stressful projects I ever worked on had a really great way of dealing with the stress (a policy that I created).
Every meeting, at the beginning of the meeting, everybody was required to complain for 5 minutes. Just talk about all the stupid decisions that got us to this point, how unreasonable the timeline was, any staffing issues you were having, any parts you needed, etc. 5 minutes. You are required to complain.
It helped a LOT, and almost a decade later when I interact with that team, we still all look back glowingly on that practice as something good.
It was a tense project, and that "you have to complain for 5 minutes" completely broke all of the tension, and let us all work together effectively. If we hadn't implemented that policy, we might not have finished the project on time.
How did you make sure that no one would complain that "Bob was an idiot who kept breaking the build", or "Alice never does her code reviews and blocks everyone"?
If you identify a problem, the person responsible will (usually) know you're talking about them, and may even appreciate that you're not calling them out in front of the team.
If necessary, you can always reach out to them one-on-one afterwards.
There's a subtle distinction that I don't think the article addressed very well.
One thing is doing something like: I know I am angry at you, my reasons are very clear to me, and now, without adding to my understanding of them, I am going to yell at you for 15 minutes, loudly.
Another is doing this: not really being sure what you're anxious or angry about, so talking about it to explore your muddled thoughts and figure it out, in a regular to soft voice.
I can see how they flow into each other and too much of the second inevitably becomes the first. But when capped (like at 5 minutes) - appropriately modulated (not yelling anger) - in a group context (further modulating the emotions) - you could arguably get the benefits of the 2nd without the downsides of the 1st.
It also depends on what kind of challenges the team faces in the first place. If there are a lot of issues stemming from faceless corporate policies or bugs in external tools or something then venting about these things for a few minutes every meeting could be good team building. If the challenges involve each other or an adjacent manager or something though even 5 minutes could get mean spirited quickly.
A proper venting process, like a heatsink or coolant, needs a mechanism to absorb the unwanted energy efficiently, and then disperse it. Asking folks to express anger or spend energy without it specifically drawing from the negative emotions within is like pouring coolant fluid from a bottle over your CPU box.
I think carefully channelled energy, however, can really help calm. I don't necessarily think it's catharsis really, as it would tend closer to meditation. Practising a martial art, trying to focus on something creative, going on a long run, playing a mentally demanding game (chess, go, starcraft) — with the right mindset, these allow you to harness your negative feelings into an activity that exists in its own sandbox, and then get processed in a way that only makes sense inside that sandbox. It's important that your activity is one where you have practised not getting further enraged (no 'tilting', as we say in video games) when you fail/perform badly inside your sandbox.
When you leave the sandbox, you find a tiny bit more peace with whatever enraged you.
Can't help but think the term "toxic," discredits the whole thing as a vehicle for something else. Aggression is natural and universal, but the tools for expressing and self-regulating it are not. One description of it that resonated personally for me was Robert Sapolsky's "depression is aggression turned inward," and while the phrase doesn't do the whole idea justice, it's more useful than hollow and seductive cliches like toxicity.
Arguably, aggression is necessarily an artifact of ideas of self and how we relate to others, and "venting" aggression safely lets you accept it (and yourself) in its totality and gives you a sense of how to manage it, instead of suppressing it and fearing that it will be exposed, only to have it come out in perverse other ways anyway. What bothers me about a lot of psychology is it seems mainly like a critical theory for deconstructing mental suffering as a means to relieve it theraputically - which is noble and useful, but it has been adopted as a scheme for moralizing coarse political interests.
Some years ago I turned a lot of my aggression outward and into disagreeableness, replacing a few intense relationships that enabled turning it inward with many new ones that did not, and it has made me more likeable, honest, trustworthy, reliable, fairer, and more sincerely compassionate, and as a result I have never been more content. It sets a healthy boundary where your natural aggression doesn't get triggered nearly as often, and you can manage it in other ways. Yes, some people will think you are an asshole, but the little bit of friction and occasional loss of a connection does not compare to relief and peace of just not caring what they think, and being free to engage people for only the enjoyment of it instead of some absurd sense of obligation. Or not.
Maybe this is wrong, but it sounds like you were in toxic relationships, ones which you were able to escape by asserting your boundaries. Asserting yourself is a little different than being hostile and/or violent, which is what aggression is usually considered.
In any case and semantics aside, congrats on removing relationships that were pushing you inwards and making you unhappy. Like the article mentions, brain pathways and behavior are like hiking paths, it's incredibly difficult to forge new ones and continually use them until it's normal.
and up until his late book Sexual Excitement: Dynamics of Erotic Life he uses the word Hostility to mean "desire to hurt others" whereas aggression is the desire to make your mark in the world (e.g. it is "aggressive" to try to put the soccer ball in the other team's goal.)
By the time Excitement was written people started splitting the meaning of aggression to frame it as a bad thing (as Stoller said hostility was) and used assertion to describe the positive side of what Stoller called "aggression" and there is a short passage where Stoller talks about this change in terminology.
Stoller uses the terms "hostility" and "sadism" for phenomena that are more common than people might think. If you ever get some pleasure out of causing somebody to suffer, even in some small way (e.g. flag somebody's post and imagine them suffering from the feeling they are being persecuted) you are being "sadistic."
> Yes, some people will think you are an asshole, but the little bit of friction and occasional loss of a connection does not compare to relief and peace of just not caring what they think
I have found deep joy in un-filtering myself. Not worrying about every syllable that comes out of my mouth for fear of retaliation, cancellation, et. al. My social circle had to shrink a bit, but the trade-off is that I am no longer suffering from a constant stream of cognitive dissonance. I stopped forcing myself to believe in ridiculous pop-culture/tech bullshit just to fit in with others. It was taking too much out of me to fake it for arbitrary social credits.
The crazy thing is that I still have high quality social relationships despite my unfiltered expression. I'd rather have a few people I can actually trust with controversial ideas rather than an army of sycophants I have to pander to constantly.
OP probably doesn’t want to answer this question for the exact reason he posted his comment. Your inquiry may be in good faith but it is 99% of how the cancel warfare begins: “Here let me ask a really introspective question to see exactly how badly I’m going to throw my code words at you in my response.”
Perhaps, but unfortunately there is not enough information to get even a toehold on an idea. Do people really go online to present a fake persona? Most embellish, and I bet some do, but does anyone else care enough to pay attention? For most folks I'd say no.
Perhaps you’re surrounded by open minded people who you can gracefully decline to agree with on every subject. Many of us live in areas where not holding status quo opinions is enough to lose your job. So I can see where folks would try to believe something despite cognitive dissonance with it.
I think by intense he implies with a lot of pressure from the other side. And like in most relationships we often try to internalise our stress in fear to make things worse and loose that relationship.If it's intense stress it's far more noticible.
I'm no stranger to depression, but thinking of it as aggression turned inward seems like a useful tool. Long term, I'd like to be able to befriend my aggression, or at least understand it, so it doesn't seem so inscrutable.
First step is probably just to recognize and accept that part of me.
From Robert Sapolsky's Behave, I learnt about the notion of "displacement aggression". We know what it is intuitively, but in short: depressingly enough, the reason stress encourages aggression is that it reduces stress. And we don't yet know the underlying biology of it.
- - -
Excuse the wall of text, but it's entirely worth reading Sapolsky's description of this:
[quote]
Shock a rat and its glucocorticoid levels [a key stress-signaller] and blood pressure rise; with enough shocks, it’s at risk for a “stress” ulcer. Various things can buffer the rat during shocks—running on a running wheel, eating, gnawing on wood in frustration. But a particularly effective buffer is for the rat to bite another rat. Stress-induced (aka frustration-induced) displacement aggression is ubiquitous in various species.
Among baboons, for example, nearly half of aggression is this type—a high-ranking male loses a fight and chases a subadult male, who promptly bites a female, who then lunges at an infant. My research shows that within the same dominance rank, the more a baboon tends to displace aggression after losing a fight, the lower his glucocorticoid levels.
Humans excel at stress-induced displacement aggression—consider how economic downturns increase rates of spousal and child abuse. Or consider a study of family violence and pro football. If the local team unexpectedly loses, spousal/partner violence by men increases 10 percent soon afterward (with no increase when the team won or was expected to lose). [...]
Little is known concerning the neurobiology of displacement aggression blunting the stress response. I’d guess that lashing out activates dopaminergic reward pathways, a surefire way to inhibit CRH release [a hormone involved in the stress response]. Far too often, giving an ulcer helps avoid getting one.
A couple people have mentioned Sapolsky and he came to my mind also. Here's a comment I made a while back along the same lines on an article about why swearing (as a form of venting) does work (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12229422). Sapolsky again on rats and baboons (from Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Ulcers):
A variant of Weiss's experiment uncovers a special feature of the outlet-for-frustration reaction. This time, when the rat gets the identical series of electric shocks and is upset, it can run across the cage, sit next to another rat and... bite the hell out of it. Stress-induced displacement of aggression: the practice works wonders at minimizing the stressfulness of a stressor. It's a real primate specialty as well. A male baboon loses a fight. Frustrated, he spins around and attacks a subordinate male who was minding his own business. An extremely high percentage of primate aggression represent frustration displaced onto innocent bystanders.
I recently left a job and boss where this dynamic was very much in play (more blaming than biting but obvious displacement aggression all the same).
My conclusion: swearing (venting) might be seen as a more civilized form of displacing stress-induced aggression.
You, in combination with the article, are describing an is/ought situation here.
Displacing aggression---biting another rat---reduces your stress. (This is an is statement.)
Therefore, to reduce your stress, you should bite one of the other rats. (This is an ought statement.)
But biting another rat leads to a stack of bad downstream consequences, which may include things that raise your stress. Therefore, not displacing aggression is the better option; certainly, telling other people to do so is probably not a good idea. Even if you are displacing aggression in a safe manner, by chewing on a piece of wood or yelling at a tree, you train yourself to respond that way to stress and will eventually end up biting an innocent rat.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply any "ought" here at all. I should've been more explicit. I thought my opening remark of "depressingly enough" was sufficient to note that I was lamenting the "is"ness of the situation, and don't "recommend" it (yikes!).
192 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadRussell Westbrook is an Olympian...
CBT is often about reframing or "reconstrueing" a negative or damaging viewpoint into something less emotionally charged. Venting is just watering and reinforcing the emotionally charged pathways -- the "gasoline on a fire" analogy.
https://centerforanxietydisorders.com/treatment-programs/in-...
Venting is "John is an asshole who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag. I hope that fucker's entire dick just falls off. He doesn't deserve jack shit."
CBT is more measured. You acknowledge the feeling, but you separate yourself from it. "Yes, I'm mad. I'm mad because of THING. THING upsets me because I believe it should be like THIS. My options are THESE."
Venting is letting your emotions drive your actions. CBT is letting your reason temper your emotion. You control your actions in spite of your emotions.
"Confronting one's fears" is usually about forcing yourself to accept and internalize that your fears are unfounded. Good examples are a fear of roller coasters, fear of flying, or basically anything else that is 99.999% harmless.
Talking through problems is way to guide you (and potentially another person) into understanding, acceptance, and compromise.
Sounds like saying, "Don't cry when you're sad it Doesn't Work"
How about let people do what they want? People vent because they want to know they aren't crazy or at fault. Not because they're trying to be calm or forget grievances.
Catharsis has a long history of study and proponents of catharsis have yet to get a "win".
As for releasing intense emotional strain - you're more likely to lash out.
Have you tried not punching the wall and have a time out instead? Because people who "punch the wall" are, according to multiple studies, more likely to lash out and be abusive.
Presumably the wall-punching and tendency toward other physical/emotional abuses are tied to one or more underlying common causes.
That is, people shouldn't be told to punch a wall (for cartharsis) or even necessarily not to do so (because it'll make you abusive), but those for whom that is a temptation or tendency should seek assistance to uncover and address the root causes.
Like, my overall emotional regulation is way better on the weeks when I've been more active, with cycling, lane swimming, taking walks, etc. And I'm certainly not doing those things "in anger", but it's still absolutely a kind of release.
Of course, the article is mostly talking about venting as a scheduled, planned thing too, so I don't know.
But now that I'm there, it's clear that this really is a helpful long-term pattern to follow for mental well-being, quite apart from being now in my mid-30s and needing to actually be intentional about staying in shape.
Please explain? Pain is both processed physically and psychologically in my experience. Is the suggestion that if I feel pain psychologically I'm abnormal? Catharsis is a name given to a human action as old as time.
> Because people who "punch the wall" are, according to multiple studies, more likely to lash out and be abusive.
I would be curious to see the studies, perhaps people who lash out are more likely to have issues worth punching a wall over? All sorts of biases could come into play.
> Have you tried not punching the wall and have a time out instead?
The times I've punched a wall are too few to derive meaningful statistics vs other methods of unwinding.
“YouTube!”
* a reference to The Aristocrats joke, and how YouTube removed publicly facing downvotes on videos. Great for concealing negative sentiment!
This does sound like a selection bias and priming.
You have a group of people who are criticised. Some of those people are told to do something physically violent. All were then told to push a button to blast a noise.
Blasting a noise is a mild aggression. Hitting a punching bag is much more aggressive. It's no surprise that the group primed for violence reported more anger and was more primed to the milder form of aggression.
Also how did the people hit the bag? Did any resist and needed encouragement. Did they punch it full force or just tap it so they could get their reward and leave?
There is no way this study can draw conclusions on people who are victims of sustained physical and emotional trauma. It only proves that people who had college essays criticised are more likely to press the beep button and feel angry if they're forced to punch a punching bag.
edit - I am biased. I endured a tough childhood with bipolar parents, physical and emotional abuse was involved. I know there is a venting trap where you can get comfortable and wallow, but that's like finding a local minima, without any form of catharsis you never heal, with undirected catharsis you get stuck, but catharsis coupled with guidance and reinforcement really does help.
It may seem like a "no duh" moment, but sometimes you need to observe it in a structured format to demonstrate it.
"priming" has had something of a fall from grace.
> The studies of behavioral priming that I had cited in the chapter were largely discredited in the famous replication crisis of psychology... behavioral priming research is effectively dead.
https://www.edge.org/adversarial-collaboration-daniel-kahnem...
Though if priming is dead, it seems interesting the people who punched the bag seemed angrier or more vindictive afterwards according to the OP study.
Our prefrontal cortex [which plays critical role in cognition, emotional regulation, and control of impulsive behavior] doesn't come fully online until you are about 24 (!). Given that, I take all studies done on university campuses with students younger than 24 with a good spoonful of salt.
Clickbait is what they do.
I'll stick to forms of science that actually know something worthwhile. And when I need to intuit anything about human behavior, then I know that I am on my own.
With that said, here's my criteria for a study I'm willing to take seriously:
* n = 10000
* The effect size is big
* It's measured in at least on western, one eastern and one other culture
* It's independently reproduced by at least 2 other independent universities/research institutes
There are probably another few things, but I think you get the spirit.
Relying on psychological theories becomes problematic when the results are like normal studies (e.g. n = 100). A benign example: I am sure that the overjustification effect and self-determination theory have a link. In both bodies of literature I have never seen that link being investigated. If it would be investigated then there is a chance that the effect might be rebranded to something else in the name of precision. IMO it seems to be used too often as a euphemism to carve out your own research space.
Most cognitive biases are not substantiated enough to be relied upon as psychological theories (there was a good HN post about this as well). And for me, that’s problematic and something to get angry about because media but also university professors tell with too much confidence that these ideas are true and are the best knowledge we currently have. I found personally, that I can better rely on how humans work by using my own mind (a combination of common sense and experience for edge cases).
Science should be about uncovering what is true, as best as it possibly can. When it comes to the field of psychology, I feel that spirit has been mostly lost.
Feel free to disagree, but if you do then I ask you: have you tried to rely on psychological theories to improve your life and take their advice to heart? If not, then you might want to give it a try. And I hope that it has a more positive effect on you than it did on me. The effect on me has an amazing silver lining but ultimately it is very bitter sweet. Contrast this with computer science which was painful but ultimately delightfully sweet because most of what was taught can be programmed into a computer and is therefore true (at least, true on some level).
I don't think proponents of catharsis are claiming that screaming at a tree if going to instantly make you calmer, it's that later that day you might feel better.
Also, participants were instructed to focus their anger on the perpetrator of the criticism, whereas it's probably healthier and more effective to simply focus on releasing your aggression.
Or, a combo study would be interesting where participants are instructed to hit a punching bag and then try to empathize with themselves or others, vs. only trying to empathize.
Anyway, it's an interesting study, but I'm not sure I'd rule out catharsis just yet.
Realistically, I'm not sure how you would even design a study to accurately measure the effects. Any sort of cathartic experience would necessarily be self-reported and we all know the accuracy of self-report studies.
One of the earlier studies just had people's anger tracked(anger has a very clear physiological response). So no need to have it self reported.
> Any sort of cathartic experience would necessarily be self-reported and we all know the accuracy of self-report studies.
That's not true. In the article, they mention observational studies wherein folks who vent are more likely to lash out. That isn't self-reporting.
I have an intuition that catharsis as part of a grief process might be quite different (more useful) than in situations where the anger arises out of other circumstances.
I don't think aggressive venting alone is going to do much, but whenever I come across one of these studies that purport to show catharsis as not existing, I can't avoid feeling there must be more to the story.
Some people are also going to interpret "catharsis/venting does not work" as meaning it's perfectly wise to not listen with actual empathy and just slam solutions at people instead. But that also doesn't work.
Writing in a journal does wonders for the more subtle things. When your mind is running in circles trying to process something. The act of writing it out helps me avoid circles and get to a conclusion.
The only thing that never does much is bottling it up inside.
Additionally, one thing that's often obscured in studies (or the reporting thereof) is that different people are different. Studies say that running doesn't help people lose weight, but that's looking for significant effects across a population. For some individuals, it does. The concept of "ymmv" is incredibly important when you care about individual impacts.
I almost never engage in catharsis now, but I do go on half marathon runs when I'm stressed. They're not the same thing... as like yelling at my husband over random annoyances.
I haven't felt the need to do it in years, since I replaced it with a concise log which doesn't usually get bogged down in details. Mostly because I purged the majority of my worst freakouts into text files no one else is likely to read years ago. This wasn't the only thing that helped me, but it was at least half of it.
It also seems likely that those agitated, unhappy people continue to struggle and don't give up as opposed to those who "stop venting".
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." — Dylan Thomas
I'm not persuaded that those who "stop venting" end up happier in the long run. It seems like a road to letting yourself be mashed down and convincing yourself that you lack power to change your circumstances.
I'm glad that Malcolm X didn't pay attention to all the people who wished he'd "stop venting".
I say that, because one of the worst things about social media is the venting. It's almost like folks are trying to suck you into a weird codependent relationship with them.
What if the punching bag is a person or pet or something able to hurt?
Sometimes their adrenaline never wears off so there is no test to run again.
People usually do what works for them. thats exactly why we still see fist fights, disinformation, yelling, racisim, war, complaining, etc. It does what it was intended to do. Otherwise, people would do something else.
If you want to be angrier or as angry - catharsis is great.
It doesnt always get grease, does it!
It depends on the usefulness of the source of the squeek! For me it translates as 'be worth helping'.
This even works for your couldron, is it worth fixing?
venting produce effects, it make the reader understand other people's feeling without knowing them
if makes them learn about people and their frustrations
ultimately, it gives them the opportunity to come up with a direct or indirect response to them
There could be some truth to it. Since I started venting on HN about how bad ads, drm, social media, and patents are, their prevalence has increased!
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1967-02716-001 - it's even in the abstract.
Now, personally, I don't have skin in the game, so I can't tell you whether it works or not.
But the fact that you're citing a 1967 psych study done on 9 year old kids tells me you have some kind of agenda for whatever reason. Not only are most psych studies flat out junk, but the 50s and 60s was the time of particularly egregious junk science. Remember, that's the time they still did lobotomies.
Besides, the study you cited only limits itself to cathartic aggression, which is clearly not the only case for the experience.
I'm citing one of the earlier ones and there's plenty of newer studies.
My "allegations" are based in research and not empty words(unlike the accusations in your comment)
Note: you can say "not until it's proven" but I can cite plenty of less weakly supported positions than "catharsis doesn't work" that have been enthusiastically taken up here. Consider trusting the data, at least a little bit, especially if you have a strongly emotional, but not well supported, response. This is the way (of the engineer).
Right now all data that I can find tells me to not vent, but take a time out. You know.... how we have "count to 10 before saying anything nasty".
There's a possibility that I'm using the term catharsis completely wrong, so I'm not taking the study at face value.
I've never heard of people equating venting with catharsis or linking them logically.
To me, catharsis is something that occurs rarely, to some people, after a tragedy. It's sort of an emotional closure that lets you move on in peace.
As for articles: Let's start with the one in the article.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-13494-002
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1966-04874-001
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-00162-010
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463283.2012.69...
https://study.com/academy/lesson/catharsis-in-psychology-the...
1. Which group achieves more success in solving their underlying problem?
2. Which group exhibits higher levels of psychological satisfaction?
I think there is some truth to the original theory, but not all "venting" is equal. I definitely have at times experienced growing resentment towards people in my life due to not fully confronting the feelings I had about my interactions with them, but in general I don't think that angry outbursts are a healthy way to deal with this. In an ideal relationship (general term, not necessarily "romantic relationship"), I think honest but empathetic and non-judgmental conversations between the parties is often going to be the only way to truly alleviate those feelings; being able to tell someone why you were hurt by their actions without judging them and then being able to hear the same without reacting defensively is much more effective than complaining to a third party, but it requires a level of trust and understanding that is usually not going to be present for anything but close family members or long time friends. Given that, I think there is value in talking through the issues with a neutral third party, but it can be hard to avoid falling into spiral of anger and resentment, which I think is why seeing a therapist or psychologist is such a common treatment. I don't think that being able to neutrally help someone deal with their feelings of anger or resentment is some kind of superpower or anything, but like any skill, there are some methods that are more effective and some that are less effective, so having some sort of training on the matter generally is helpful. Most importantly though, they still need to build that same level of trust and understanding with the patient, which I think is the most common reason that therapy isn't able to help some people; if you're not open to the idea of learning to trust and get helped in therapy, it's going to be hard to actually resolve anything.
Venting isn't for catharsis; It's for seeking validation. When you vent TO someone and they lend a sympathetic ear, it's a huge help.
Venting is a social bonding ritual.
You generally don't get this online because most of the audience is NOT sympathetic, so you'll get criticism after criticism, making things even worse.
You'd still vent, if alone on a desert island, maybe to The Gods.
Ever hear yourself saying out loud, usually with expletives, something that you would "never say"? Listen to that voice!
That's communication of unconscious but frustrated thoughts. Sometimes it has to come out verbally because ones inner dialogue isn't strong enough due to social or superego suppression.
After you said it to yourself you feel better.
We are not the singular identities simpler minds suppose us.
But I do wonder how much of it actually lands for the recipient. As an influencer putting out a carefully curated image of yourself, how meaningful is it to be boosted by a bunch of mostly-anonymous strangers? Wouldn't it just feed into a kind of dissociative thing where you recognize that they're praising and lifting up a mask and have no idea about the particulars of the real person's struggles? I don't know.
Anger usually stems from a boundary being violated. It's our instinctive evolved response for pushing back against someone who has encroached on us.
When we "vent" to a peer, it is relieving because it transfers that personal boundary to a group boundary. We feel "OK, my peer will now back me up the next time this happens."
Venting is like yelling for reinforcements when you see someone storming your corner of the castle wall.
That's not what it's for. It's for getting thoughts out of your head, having the opportunity to articulate strong feelings that might otherwise be fuzzy, and for feeling heard and supported.
If changing your opinions is the goal, venting is pretty clearly not the way to get there.
Every meeting, at the beginning of the meeting, everybody was required to complain for 5 minutes. Just talk about all the stupid decisions that got us to this point, how unreasonable the timeline was, any staffing issues you were having, any parts you needed, etc. 5 minutes. You are required to complain.
It helped a LOT, and almost a decade later when I interact with that team, we still all look back glowingly on that practice as something good.
It was a tense project, and that "you have to complain for 5 minutes" completely broke all of the tension, and let us all work together effectively. If we hadn't implemented that policy, we might not have finished the project on time.
Good approach: Specify that complaints be non-specific to a person on the team.
Very often, it is the case that a specific person /is/ the problem.
If you identify a problem, the person responsible will (usually) know you're talking about them, and may even appreciate that you're not calling them out in front of the team.
If necessary, you can always reach out to them one-on-one afterwards.
One thing is doing something like: I know I am angry at you, my reasons are very clear to me, and now, without adding to my understanding of them, I am going to yell at you for 15 minutes, loudly.
Another is doing this: not really being sure what you're anxious or angry about, so talking about it to explore your muddled thoughts and figure it out, in a regular to soft voice.
I can see how they flow into each other and too much of the second inevitably becomes the first. But when capped (like at 5 minutes) - appropriately modulated (not yelling anger) - in a group context (further modulating the emotions) - you could arguably get the benefits of the 2nd without the downsides of the 1st.
Except if you make it funny.
Funny venting -- exasperated joking -- is an enormously effective stress reduction tactic.
The key point really I guess is that you have to have gone looking for the laugh before you let it out; that is likely the therapeutic value.
"HELLO POLLLLLLYYYYY!"
I think carefully channelled energy, however, can really help calm. I don't necessarily think it's catharsis really, as it would tend closer to meditation. Practising a martial art, trying to focus on something creative, going on a long run, playing a mentally demanding game (chess, go, starcraft) — with the right mindset, these allow you to harness your negative feelings into an activity that exists in its own sandbox, and then get processed in a way that only makes sense inside that sandbox. It's important that your activity is one where you have practised not getting further enraged (no 'tilting', as we say in video games) when you fail/perform badly inside your sandbox.
When you leave the sandbox, you find a tiny bit more peace with whatever enraged you.
Arguably, aggression is necessarily an artifact of ideas of self and how we relate to others, and "venting" aggression safely lets you accept it (and yourself) in its totality and gives you a sense of how to manage it, instead of suppressing it and fearing that it will be exposed, only to have it come out in perverse other ways anyway. What bothers me about a lot of psychology is it seems mainly like a critical theory for deconstructing mental suffering as a means to relieve it theraputically - which is noble and useful, but it has been adopted as a scheme for moralizing coarse political interests.
Some years ago I turned a lot of my aggression outward and into disagreeableness, replacing a few intense relationships that enabled turning it inward with many new ones that did not, and it has made me more likeable, honest, trustworthy, reliable, fairer, and more sincerely compassionate, and as a result I have never been more content. It sets a healthy boundary where your natural aggression doesn't get triggered nearly as often, and you can manage it in other ways. Yes, some people will think you are an asshole, but the little bit of friction and occasional loss of a connection does not compare to relief and peace of just not caring what they think, and being free to engage people for only the enjoyment of it instead of some absurd sense of obligation. Or not.
In any case and semantics aside, congrats on removing relationships that were pushing you inwards and making you unhappy. Like the article mentions, brain pathways and behavior are like hiking paths, it's incredibly difficult to forge new ones and continually use them until it's normal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stoller
and up until his late book Sexual Excitement: Dynamics of Erotic Life he uses the word Hostility to mean "desire to hurt others" whereas aggression is the desire to make your mark in the world (e.g. it is "aggressive" to try to put the soccer ball in the other team's goal.)
By the time Excitement was written people started splitting the meaning of aggression to frame it as a bad thing (as Stoller said hostility was) and used assertion to describe the positive side of what Stoller called "aggression" and there is a short passage where Stoller talks about this change in terminology.
Stoller uses the terms "hostility" and "sadism" for phenomena that are more common than people might think. If you ever get some pleasure out of causing somebody to suffer, even in some small way (e.g. flag somebody's post and imagine them suffering from the feeling they are being persecuted) you are being "sadistic."
I have found deep joy in un-filtering myself. Not worrying about every syllable that comes out of my mouth for fear of retaliation, cancellation, et. al. My social circle had to shrink a bit, but the trade-off is that I am no longer suffering from a constant stream of cognitive dissonance. I stopped forcing myself to believe in ridiculous pop-culture/tech bullshit just to fit in with others. It was taking too much out of me to fake it for arbitrary social credits.
The crazy thing is that I still have high quality social relationships despite my unfiltered expression. I'd rather have a few people I can actually trust with controversial ideas rather than an army of sycophants I have to pander to constantly.
Curious what this means?
If GP said, "politics" then I'd get the drift.
Imagine some position you personally find to be controversial/wrong/stupid but that everyone else around you agrees with (or vice versa).
In my view, understanding what my position is on some arbitrary matter does not further this conversation in any meaningful way.
I'm no stranger to depression, but thinking of it as aggression turned inward seems like a useful tool. Long term, I'd like to be able to befriend my aggression, or at least understand it, so it doesn't seem so inscrutable.
First step is probably just to recognize and accept that part of me.
[quote]
Shock a rat and its glucocorticoid levels [a key stress-signaller] and blood pressure rise; with enough shocks, it’s at risk for a “stress” ulcer. Various things can buffer the rat during shocks—running on a running wheel, eating, gnawing on wood in frustration. But a particularly effective buffer is for the rat to bite another rat. Stress-induced (aka frustration-induced) displacement aggression is ubiquitous in various species.
Among baboons, for example, nearly half of aggression is this type—a high-ranking male loses a fight and chases a subadult male, who promptly bites a female, who then lunges at an infant. My research shows that within the same dominance rank, the more a baboon tends to displace aggression after losing a fight, the lower his glucocorticoid levels.
Humans excel at stress-induced displacement aggression—consider how economic downturns increase rates of spousal and child abuse. Or consider a study of family violence and pro football. If the local team unexpectedly loses, spousal/partner violence by men increases 10 percent soon afterward (with no increase when the team won or was expected to lose). [...]
Little is known concerning the neurobiology of displacement aggression blunting the stress response. I’d guess that lashing out activates dopaminergic reward pathways, a surefire way to inhibit CRH release [a hormone involved in the stress response]. Far too often, giving an ulcer helps avoid getting one.
[/quote]
A variant of Weiss's experiment uncovers a special feature of the outlet-for-frustration reaction. This time, when the rat gets the identical series of electric shocks and is upset, it can run across the cage, sit next to another rat and... bite the hell out of it. Stress-induced displacement of aggression: the practice works wonders at minimizing the stressfulness of a stressor. It's a real primate specialty as well. A male baboon loses a fight. Frustrated, he spins around and attacks a subordinate male who was minding his own business. An extremely high percentage of primate aggression represent frustration displaced onto innocent bystanders.
I recently left a job and boss where this dynamic was very much in play (more blaming than biting but obvious displacement aggression all the same).
My conclusion: swearing (venting) might be seen as a more civilized form of displacing stress-induced aggression.
Displacing aggression---biting another rat---reduces your stress. (This is an is statement.)
Therefore, to reduce your stress, you should bite one of the other rats. (This is an ought statement.)
But biting another rat leads to a stack of bad downstream consequences, which may include things that raise your stress. Therefore, not displacing aggression is the better option; certainly, telling other people to do so is probably not a good idea. Even if you are displacing aggression in a safe manner, by chewing on a piece of wood or yelling at a tree, you train yourself to respond that way to stress and will eventually end up biting an innocent rat.