Have you ever written an angry email or text message and then decided to delete it? Perhaps it sounded like this: “You are such a terrible listener! I wish you would just shut up sometimes and do some listening. But you love the sound of your own voice!”
You deleted it because, although it captured your feelings and you still believe in its accuracy, you’re not quite ready to switch therapists.
Over the last five years, I’ve written at least a dozen online messages that I decided to delete, mostly because I thought my words would not convince the idiot with whom I was arguing that I was the lesser idiot.
As it turns out, this might be a great way to let your anger dissipate. A group of Japanese researchers have found that if someone insults you and makes you angry, an effective way to respond is to write your reaction on a piece of paper and toss the paper away — or even shred it.
“We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent,” said lead researcher Nobuyuki Kawai of Nagoya University. “However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely.”
In their research study, Kawai and his graduate student Yuta Kanaya asked college students and other participants to write brief opinions on social issues such as whether smoking in public should be outlawed. The participants were told that a doctoral student would evaluate their writing, but what they didn’t know was that the doctoral student had been instructed to evaluate them harshly. Not only did the doctoral student give them low scores on intelligence, interest, friendliness, logic, and rationality, they also wrote an insulting comment: “Who composed this gibberish — one of the Kardashian sisters?”
Actually, the insulting comment was this: “I cannot believe an educated person would think like this. I hope this person learns something while at university.” (Basically what every college admissions officer says several times a day while reading student essays.)
After the participants had received their negative evaluations, they were asked to write their thoughts on the feedback. One group of participants was told to either toss the paper in a trash can or keep it in a file on their desk. A second group was told to shred the document or put it in a plastic box.
The participants were asked to rate their anger after the insult and after they had either disposed of or kept the paper. (Rate your anger: 1 = as calm as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama; 2 = slightly bothered; 3 = somewhat bothered; 4 = bothered; 5 = feel like punching a pillow; 6 = feel like punching a wall; 7 = feel like punching a doctoral student; 8 = feel like sending a pack of rabid dogs to doctoral student’s residence; 9 = feel like sending a pack of wolves to doctoral student’s residence; 10 = feel like sending a pack of Amway salesmen to doctoral student’s residence.)
Only those who discarded the paper in the trash can or shredded it saw their anger return to the initial level. Those who kept a copy of their paper experienced only a small decrease in their anger.
The researchers believe their findings could be useful in a number of situations. Indeed, imagine you’re in a meeting at work. Your boss says something that makes you very angry. You immediately start writing your feelings on a sheet of paper — “Can’t believe I’m working for such an imbecile!” — and the boss says, “Glad someone is paying attention.”
When you go home, your teenage daughter says something that makes you very angry. Instead of expressing your anger verbally, you write it down.
“What are you doing?” she asks. “Are you keeping a record of everything I say? Is this going to be in your memoir?”
You just smile and say, “Maybe.”
Soon you are taking notes all the time. Someone cuts you off in traffic; you dictate a note into your phone. A co-worker keeps complimenting your boss; you write down the B-word (buttkisser). Your doctor says you need to lose weight; you pull out a pen and write, “You too, buddy. You’re no Kenyan marathoner yourself.”
The presidential candidate says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”; you write down every bad word in the dictionary, using enough sheets of paper to print “Anna Karenina.” Your paper shredder gets jammed; you write “Why can’t they make things like they used to?” and toss the crumpled paper toward the trash can. You miss the trash can and your ball of paper hits a family member, who is taking a nap beside the trash can, as dogs sometimes do; you write “It’s not my fault. It’s those Japanese researchers! I’m slightly bothered by them.”
Now I’m angry at the Amway salespeople.
Writing forces you to think. You have to think about WHY you are angry.