Roy Franklin Richardson

EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION

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From the present study, anger may be said to have a two fold functional meaning. First it intensifies volitional action in a useful direction. Second, viewed from the mental conditions under which it occurs, it may be a superfluous affectivity and is largely an end in itself. These two functions are not to be separated. In fact any single emotion of anger in its different stages of reaction may be merely hedonic, it may serve a directly useful purpose or it may be both. These two functional aspects of anger are the basis for pedagogical conclusions.

Sublimation. Anger in a modified form has been the theme of the poet and artist. With its running mate fear, it has played an important role in religion. Primitive magic with its self assertive coercion of the supernatural, is not unlike anger. The curse prayer of backward religion is motivated by resentment. A deity with an irascible temper like that of the ancient Hebrews suggests the role of righteous indignation in the discipline of the soul. Plato^[1] held that anger is at the foundation of the organization of the State. Ribot (16) has suggested that it is at the basis of justice. More recently Bergson writes, “No society can reach civilization unless throughout its members, there exists the nervous organization which supports the sentiment of anger and hostility against criminals; and this physical organization is the foundation of what we call our moral code.” President Hall (10), James (13), and Dewey (5) have suggested that much of the best work of the world and the great deeds of valor have been done by anger. Dr. Hall states, “A large part of education is to teach men to be angry aright,—it should be one aim of pedagogy to show how the powers of the soul should be utilized.—Man has powers of resentment which should be hitched onto and allowed to do good and profitable work. We should keep alive our emotions and allow them to do our labor.” (From lecture notes.) It has been suggested by Wundt (22), James (13) and Stanley (17) that the function of anger is to increase volitional action. The latter author writes, “At some point in the course of evolution, anger comes in as a stimulant to aggressive willed action. Some favored individual first attained the power of getting mad, in violently attacking his fellows and so attaining sustenance likely in the struggle for food.” The same author further writes, “We take it then that it was a most momentous day in the progress of mind when anger was first achieved and some individuals really got mad.”

Education has to do with the function of anger in human needs, in growth and development and in mental hygiene. Ethics has at times advocated the elimination of anger as if it were a noxious product. From a pedagogical view, it should be cultivated and excited aright. The familiar moral exhortations, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath,” “Love your enemies and do good to those that hate you,” and others like them, are in accord with some satisfactory individual reactions to anger from the feeling side, which have been cited; but their universal application would not always serve the purpose of ethics. In pedagogical practice, they would fall short. A good healthy resentment is, at times, a good thing and should be kept alive. The emotion, if it works, must not die out too satisfactorily at the cost of real effort. There should be a working residuum for the time when it is needed. An injury may be forgiven too quickly and resentment given up too easily. A healthy fighting attitude, increased caution and willed action turned into productive work is often subverted for an immediate satisfactory ending of the emotion. There are none of the subjects studied but observe this wholesome effect of anger at times. Anger may disappear successfully and satisfactorily on the side of the feelings. The subject may attain the full sense of victory by a number of devices of make-believe, substitution, disguise, etc. An inner victory may be a good thing. In fact, all subjects would, at times, resort to imaginative processes motivated by the feeling and impulsive side of the emotion. A subjective satisfaction may in fact save the day, clear the mental atmosphere, so to speak, and allow mental life to continue along its habitual lines. On the other hand, a subjective victory may become too easy. On the verge of defeat, victory is at times imagined which takes the place of real volition. The fight may be carried too far through the medium of ideas leaving little enthusiasm for actual effort. A too easy habit of excusing the offender at times serves an unprofitable end. Anger should not be cut off too near its beginning by finding excuses too readily for the offender or offending situation. It should at least be allowed to get a little above the initial feeling stage to keep the emotional life alive or there is danger of lapsing into obliviousness to essential rights; mental life becomes too prosaic and commonplace, on a plateau with no capacity to acquire new levels.

A second point of which the writer is convinced, is that in order to study the emotions, especially the deep seated primary emotions like fear and anger, it is necessary to take into account the finer working of the emotion in its feeling and impulsive stage of development and disappearance. In fact, the milder tenuous emotions of anger are markedly important from the educational side as well as psychologically. The normal function of the emotion is better exemplified in the less intense experiences. Anger, as it is usually thought of, is the emotion in its excited uncontrolled stage. Anger, sublimated into keener intellectual and willed action, is no less anger though its affective side is less intense; its reactive side is working in better accord with the evolutionary function of the emotion,—to intensify action in a needed direction. In fact, affective processes of indignation, resentment and irascible feelings which are not called anger in the popular sense, from the scientific side should be considered a part of the anger consciousness. They have the feeling fore-stage of humiliation and an intellectual reaction; the residuum of the affective process has every mark of that victorious satisfaction, which is typical of anger.

Such tenuous emotions are reported to have far reaching results in mental behavior and personal development. One subject, resentful at an implication against the value of his work, considers that it stimulated him to increased determined action and intensified endeavor for several months in order to show the offender he was wrong. A., resentful of X.’s adverse suggestion, put in three days of severe intellectual labor to prove his point. E. observes that a humiliation and mild resentment was a keen stimulus to his ambition. His ambitious behavior, he considers was accompanied by increased friendliness toward the offender. The question was privately put to a number of persons as to the effects of resentment on some of their ambitions in the past. Every person who was asked, after a careful recall, was able to find one and some times several instances of important results of anger of this kind. Some persons from early childhood have habitually reacted to little resentments to beat the offender in an ambitious way. One person with defective eyes early became sensitive about it. Any implication against his defect was always reacted to, he says, by saying to himself, “I will show you I can do more with poor eyes than you can with good ones, and you will be sorry some day.” M. 28—“Resentful because the parents of a lady to whom I was paying attention did not approve of me, I determined to make so much of myself that they would be sorry. It was one of the main incentives to my entering on a career. With this aim I went to the University; I worked hard with success. Many times during the year I would recall the incident and would resolve again and again to show them some day. For two years this idea was pretty constantly in my mind. In the course of four years I now take keen satisfaction in recalling that I have partly accomplished my purpose.” M. 25.—“Four years ago a friend whom I admire much, told me that I would never make a scientist. I have resented it ever since and have laid plans to show him, which I have partly carried out. Every once in a while I recall his statement in connection with my work. It spurs me on. I imagine myself sending him a copy of my scientific problem on which I am working.” M. 34.—“In my sophomore year in college, I failed to be elected president of our literary society. I became resentful against the one who beat me in the election. This person was ambitious in college contests. I now laid plans to beat him. I went into an oratorical contest first with the sole aim of surpassing him. I did not care about the others. I am certain that I would never have gone into this contest and others if it had not been for a deep set resentment developed against him. I recall yet how in practicing and writing in contests during the two years of my college work my aim principally was to surpass this person. We were good friends all the time.”

Such tenuous resentments which persist for years, it may be, against people with whom one is on friendly terms, and which are accompanied by a rather sudden rise in the curve of personal growth, are evidently an essential part of the anger consciousness. Smaller achievements of individual worth are often reported to be the direct result of a healthy sort of reaction from resentment. It is entirely probable that most persons, especially those of irascible disposition, could point to sudden spurts in their own personal development and achievement, which were motivated by anger which never reached the stage of intense excitability or from the residuum of exciting anger which disappeared unsuccessfully. Freud (9) has taken the view that much of biography should be rewritten to include the part that sexual motives, which have been sublimated, play in personal ambitions. Evidently anger cannot be neglected by one who seeks for motives of personal growth whether biographer or educator.

A too soft pedagogy which would heal over too soon the injury to self-feelings, has its disadvantages. Encouragement at times by superficial means may cut off a good healthy angry reaction which may be needed. In fact a little lowered self-feeling with an irascible response is a good thing and it may be a signal for “hands off,” or a little skillful and judicious suggestion. It is frequently observed by the subjects studied that anger at self intensifies a lagging willed action and breaks up interfering habits. A quotation from B. will illustrate. “I turned the anger inward and vituperated against myself for being such a lazy man. The emotion of the moment was relieved and I feel now like getting down to work at the stuff and getting it out of the way.” Some subjects work at their very best when mildly angry. Attention and association processes are intensified to the point that real difficulties disappear. Anger in the exciting stage and at a situation too remote from the problem at hand, interferes with mental work. Bryan and Harter (3) in their study of skill in telegraphy, found that the skillful operator may work best when angry, but the inexperienced worker is less efficient. Michael Angelo is said to have worked at his best in a state of irascible temper. The mass of mankind are sluggish and need a hearty resentment as a stimulant. If the circumstances are too soft and easy, the best which is in a man may be dormant; there is no tonic to a strong nature capable of bearing it like anger.

Many a good intellect has lacked the good powers of resentment necessary for the most efficient work. The boy who has not the capacity for anger should be deliberately taught it by some means. GÖthe, who was a rather keen observer of human nature, said, “With most of us the requisite intensity of passion is not forth-coming without an element of resentment, and common sense and careful observation will I believe confirm the opinion that few people who amount to anything are without a good capacity for hostile feelings upon which they draw freely when they need it.”

Need of Expression. The second condition for the expression of anger is that in which reaction is an end in itself. It may be said that while on the one hand from a genetic and utilitarian point of view the function of anger is to do work, to aid in behavior, where increased willed action is needed; on the other, the mere expressional side in connection with feeling and impulse assumes an important role in every emotion. In fact with intense and exciting anger, utility may be ignored and actually thwarted, volitional action is exerted contrary to objective needs.

There is much in the expression of anger in both the subjective and objective reaction to the emotion whose impulsive aim is merely to release unpleasant feeling tension, to clear the mental atmosphere, so to speak. A brief resumÉ of the reactive consciousness to anger will illustrate. First on the feeling side there occurs a mental situation accompanied by a tendency to expression in order to remove or modify the situation. Irritation may be relieved or turned into pleasantness by the reaction. Lowered self-feeling may be restored with extra compensation in pleasurable feelings of victory, if the reaction has been successful. Second, the expression of anger involves restraint, the cruder unsocial tendencies are controlled and others are substituted of a less objectionable and offensive nature. By both objective and subjective reactions, devices of disguise, transfer and modification of the unsocial pugnacious tendencies may allow the restraint to be released and the emotive tendency fully satisfied, in which a feeling of pleasantness follows. Third, the reaction which has been fully satisfactory from the feeling side, is followed by a partial or complete immunity against the recurrence of the anger from the same mental situation, as the successful reaction has removed the mental situation from which the emotion arose.

Anger from the point of view stated above, touches upon the second educational aim. So large a part of the reactive consciousness to anger is motivated to find a successful surrogate for cruder and unsocial tendencies which are objectional, that this side of anger expression is educationally important. It is a desirable personal equipment to have strong potentialities of anger. However there should be a mentality which is versatile and active enough by training and habit to react successfully to the emotion, in the first place to use such reservoirs of energy for work, and second, to react satisfactorily from the feeling-side, where the instinctive tendencies are restrained, and break up morbid and unpleasant mental tension which may be an inference.

A good angry outburst at times may be a good thing, but most frequently some sort of surrogate is more satisfactory. Habits of witticism, refined joking, a little good-natured play and teasing within the limits of propriety serves a worthy end for mental hygiene, and often leaves a basis for good will and a friendship which would otherwise be in danger. The habit of suddenly breaking up an angry tension by a good thrust of wit or joke would be a good one to inculcate with the irascibly inclined. Many persons suffer in feelings and lack of good friendship because they have never learned to be good mental sparrers and to relieve their emotions by socially appropriate reaction rather than by a method of repression which is cheaper at the moment but more expensive in the end. Their anger is too absorbing and serious. It lacks the necessary flexibility, their emotions are too near the instinctive level and when the instinctive tendencies are restrained they lack mental habits of purging their feelings in a satisfactory way, consequently suppression is resorted to as a self-defense.

Anger and Instruction. As Terman (20) has pointed out, the emotions employed in the act of instruction need a systematic investigation. The emotions brought into play in school control, as incentive to work, emotional reactions which retard, and those which accelerate learning and efficient work in classes, these are little known scientifically.

Anger, or, perhaps, better potentialities of anger in both teacher and pupils, is impulsively used in the role of teaching. Skill in using this emotion aright is part of the teacher’s stock in trade. Pugnacity in the form of rivalry is a common device.

Individual Differences. First, there is the problem of individual differences in the emotional life of students; and the teacher, too, for that matter. With some, the dominant emotion is fear and anxiety. The material of the present study shows a wide variation in the type and character of emotional reactions of the subjects studied in which anger is one of the most frequently occurring emotions. This difference is illustrated by the following summary from three subjects: With J., anger predominates over fear; he knows but little of the latter emotion. Anger usually occurs from a fore-period of lowered self-feeling, the feeling intensity of the fore-period is not strong. The reactive stage of the anger does not reach a high degree of excitement. With him, anger usually disappears into indifference and unpleasantness, leaving tendencies of passive dislike. He observed no cases of anger at injustice or unfairness except when the latter sentiments referred to himself. His anger for the most part is an unsuccessful experience and is unpleasant. He consequently tries to avoid getting angry and has relatively few emotions. The after-period of his anger tends to be a little morbid, lacking any strongly marked disposition which is the source of tendencies to do more work. Subject G. has anger as a dominant emotion over fear. He scarcely knows anger which arises from a fore-period of humiliation except anger at himself when he has been inefficient. He does not hold resentments against persons but against situations and principles. Anger is usually unpleasant except a mild after-period of relief. With him, anger is a means of throwing off superfluous feelings of irritation and serves but little the purpose of work, except to increase volitional action for the moment. His anger often refers to himself. Anger at unfairness tends to refer to the principle rather than to the person. The emotion occurs more frequently when he is unwell. It is rather slow to appear, by a gradual accumulation, till the point of anger is reached; the emotion does not attain a high degree of excitement. With subject C. the character and type of anger reaction is in marked contrast to the two subjects mentioned above. He knows but little of fear except in extreme situations. His anger nearly all springs from a fore-period of humiliation and is often intense in its most active stage. For a time during the most intense stage of the emotion, he almost loses the sense of justice; but as the emotion begins to die down, he has a habit of excusing the offender and looking at his side of the question. His anger is frequently followed by pity, remorse, shame and fear. The emotion is both pleasant and unpleasant. The disappearance is usually unpleasant and leaves a wealth of affective tendencies and mental attitudes which are later a source of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Anger is one of the greatest stimuli he has to do work. He will work for days preparing some subject in which he has had opposition that excited his resentment in order to even up with the offender, and takes extreme delight in making his point. His tendency to anger is greater when feeling well pleased with himself. The residuum of his emotion involves attitudes of determination and idealization which plays an important role in his ambition in general.

The description above will suffice to show the problem in individual differences in emotional life. With some subjects fear is the ruling passion. Subjects A. and B. have almost an even proportion of fear and anger during the period of observation. However these instances represent adult persons. How far the habitual emotional reactions are determined by training and instruction, is an important question. It is highly probable that the character of training in childhood and early adolescence plays a leading part. Subject C. above was an only child and took considerable license, almost getting beyond the control of his parents at an early age. J. reports that at early adolescence, anger was much more frequent and intense than at present. He believes that an early philosophical notion that intelligence should dominate the emotions, had an influence in establishing his present emotional habits. G. was early taught that it was sinful to get angry, an idea which he accepted at the time. His anger rarely refers to persons but vents on objects, principles and situations involved. He has relatively few emotions of anger. He believes that his early religious training was of importance in moulding the habitual reactions which he now assumes when angry. Such material as we have makes it entirely probable that a large part of the habitual mental reactions assumed in anger is the result of training. It may be said further that when instruction involves affairs of emotional life, individual difference become a still more pressing problem than when intelligence is the criterion.

Other inferences of the role of anger in the act of instruction are suggested from the present study. If the teacher himself does not possess the ability of well defined resentment against an infringement of fairness, advantage of this defect may be taken by the alert pupil unless there is compensation for it in another direction as by the principle of co-operation, by love or pride appealed to. Cooley however puts the matter a little too strongly when he says, “No teacher can maintain discipline unless his scholars feel that in some manner he will resent a breach of it.” (Human Nature and the Social Order (4), Page 244.) The method of school control itself refers to some extent to the individual emotional life of the teacher, as well as pupil.

When anger enters into the role of discipline, of the three types already discussed, that which springs from the sentiment of justice is most efficient in instruction. Anger which arises from irritable feelings, from its nature becomes a dangerous emotion to be used in discipline. Emotion of this type develops by a cumulative process till the point of anger has been reached. It too readily ignores justice and is easily transferred from the real offender and may finally break out against an innocent party who may have unwittingly touched off the feelings which have been accumulated by previous stimuli, consequently anger of this type which is so frequently displayed in school rooms usually defeats the ends of discipline. Anger with a fore-period of lowered self-feeling because of the personal element entering into this type of anger and the tendency to ignore justice can evidently be resorted to but sparingly in school control unless it also involves the sense of justice.

Another point the teacher has to take into account is that from his position, if he is held in respect, the anger he excites in the student will usually be preceded by humiliation and, if he has been unfair, it will be intensified by the sense of offended fairness. Anger of this type is the one most frequently followed by an emotional disposition against the offender. It is the residuum of unsuccessfully expressed anger of this type which becomes a disturbing element in school control with the student who is irascibly inclined. The wise teacher who understands the individual emotional life of the pupil and the nature of the after-period of anger, will skillfully remove the morbid residuum and ally the resentful pupil on his side. Dislike following anger, is skillfully removed, will frequently increase the friendship of the offender more than before the offense. This principle of compensation in the after-period is thus to be utilized in discipline. It may be a good plan deliberately to bring a moody pupil to the point of anger and let him vent his wrath. Any punishment in discipline has the possibilities of being dangerous to school control, especially with the student of pugnacious disposition, if the justice of the punishment cannot be recognized by the offending pupil. Evidently a mistake in control is not to recognize the individual differences in emotional life and to attempt to use the discipline of fear with an irascible boy who knows no fear. Anger, disappearing unsuccessfully, may leave a morbid residuum which completely disqualifies the student for efficient learning, consequently when it exists, it is the business of the educator to remove the morbidity, transform it into work or to have the pupil transferred; for it may be as serious a hindrance to learning as adenoids or defective sense organs.

There is every reason to believe that a large part of the mental reactions to anger is individually acquired habits, consequently successful and satisfactory reactions are a matter of training. Potentialities of anger may actually be taught indirectly by building up the sentiments and mental disposition from which anger arises. Whatever will increase ideals and new desires, achievements in school which allow a better opinion of self and build up the sentiment of self-regard, of fairness and justice, are at work at the very root of anger consciousness. The study of the mental situation from which anger arises allows every reason to believe that when there is a lack of potentialities to anger, it may be built up in this indirect manner. The student who lacks good healthy resentment when the proper stimulus is at hand evidently is weak in the sentiment of self-regard, desire to achieve, or sense of fairness.

Whatever exercises will excite the pugnacious instinct, if done satisfactorily may involve a training in emotional habits. Habits of good fighting in work and play, the give and take in debate, class discussion, the witty retort, boxing, the team games if carried on aright, afford good exercise for the emotions. To acquire good habits of behavior when under fire, to fight clean and to the finishing point, to take defeat in a sportsman-like manner, are valuable acquisitions educationally whether they are acquired in athletics or the rivalry of intellectual work. On the other hand, athletics and mental contests may be carried on under conditions of emotional reaction, which defeat the aim of healthy emotional habits and consequently lack their better educational significance.