14 DAY TRIAL // Modern psychology promotes the catharsis, the anger discharge on objects, like for example punching pillows of hitting a punching bag. That would turn you into a peaceful guru sharing wisdom to everybody around you. Is that so?
Reality drastically contradicts this. Much of the interlope fauna is made of ex-sportsmen (eve performance sportsmen), and many gangsters are ex-pugilists. It seems that rather the knowledge of beating people makes them more secure on doing it.
An older research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology attempted to solve the aura of the catharsis through two points: can a media message control people's anger and does venting anger through physical aggression turns people in peaceful lambs (this is the principle of the Catharsis theory)?
360 undergraduate students watched either a pro- or anti-catharsis media report. 50 % were angered, the others not. Exposure to a media message in support of catharsis impacted subsequent behavior.
Angry people were extremely kin to to hit a punching bag when previously exposed to a bogus newspaper article claiming that discharging anger against an inanimate object would work. Those reading an article that debunked the catharsis theory were not eager to hit the bag.
To test the second issue, 700 subjects were exposed to the situation where they were insulted by an unseen partner. Some hit the punching bag, others did not. The subjects then played a head-to-head computer game with a partner, the same who had insulted them or not. In this game, the subject could control the volume and duration of a blast of noise received by the partner when delaying an answer.
It appeared that the category that hit the bag did not have decreased hostility; on the contrary, it increased. It appears that catharsis rather makes people lose control.
"Telling people that aggressive activity is a good way to get rid of anger led them to choose aggressive activity, but performing this activity apparently failed to reduce anger?The messages made people seek out aggressive release, but this initial venting then increased their subsequent aggression toward another person," wrote the authors.