Study Correlates Anger, Age and Education

In a first-of-its-kind investigation, scientists have finally mapped the correlations that exist between anger, age and education in the American population. The experts have determined that the most angry citizens are young people, followed by those with children at home and those with minimal education. The work was conducted on more than 1,800 US citizens, who were at least 18 years old at the time of the survey. The main goal of this inquiry was to build a “portrait” of American anger, the research team behind the study informs.

The survey was led by University of Toronto researcher Scott Schieman, who is deeply interested in this kind of results. He says that the new study cataloged as anger any behavior ranging from mild annoyance to yelling and feelings of outrage, which are more close to the general definition of the word. The new work may help psychiatrists in devising new treatments for those with anger-management issues. Experts have been warning for a long time that keeping anger bottled up inside is not a good thing, and that the behavior can be very detrimental to one's health.

In fact, a number of studies have already shown that those who can express their negative feelings, and talk about them, tend to live longer than those who spend the better part of their existence being frustrated and angry at one thing or the other. The current investigation was conducted more than four years ago, but its full results will not be available for publishing until 2010, the team reveals, quoted by LiveScience. One of the results that really stood out was the fact that those younger than 30 seemed to show a lot more anger than those older than them. They were shown to experience the emotion more often, and at greater intensities, Schieman adds.

The expert also identified a number of three core factors that promoted stress (called stressors), which included time pressure or deadlines, economic difficulties, and conflicts with others at the work place. In a recent paper, it was also shown that men who did not discuss about their workplace conflicts had a higher chance of suffering from a heart attack. Full details of the current study will be published in an upcoming issue of the International Handbook of Anger, which will appear in January 2010.