| I think anger is a human response to unfairness, its function is signaling and calling attention to a willingness to escalate. Animals have similar emotions. Bruce Shneier has written a great book “liars and outliers”, which talks about how we maintain the trust society needs to operate. Studies it cites have shown that people are willing to take a loss to punish others who they perceive are cheating and breaking rules, especially if they do it all the time. Anger is often the response by those affected, and to a lesser extent those who enforce norms, to systematic rule breaking, and accomplishes the two things: 1) Unmistakably calling attention to the issue and oneself 2) Signaling a willingness to escalate to mutual loss if need be, if the behavior persists So, to say it’s driven by fear is too reductionist! It serves a major function in human interactions. Consider Steve Jobs’ reaction when Google was going to go ahead with the Android. Finally, if you want to avoid anger in your own relationships, the key is to hold people to a lower standard and expect less of them as ethical and rational human beings. People find it hard to do because, to stop fighting with someone, you have to greatly lower your respect them in certain areas. But the funny thing is, they will often appreciate you for doing this, and never wanted that respect! Not really, anyway. |