The Venting Trap: Why Letting It Out Makes It Worse

"Except you won't. For nearly forty years, empirical research has been trying to tell us something we refuse to hear: Venting anger doesn't extinguish it - it fans the flames. The "Steam Kettle" theory of emotion is seductive, intuitive, and wrong. We've built an entire industry around the myth that anger is pressurized gas that needs to be released through screaming into pillows, smashing plates in trendy "rage rooms," or hammering out vitriolic unsent emails. The logic seems obvious: Discharge the energy or spontaneously combust."

"Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State, has devoted his career to challenging our most cherished emotional myths. His experiments resemble sitcom plots but deliver sobering outcomes. In his most well-known study, Bushman intentionally angered participants by having a confederate deliver harsh feedback on their essays. He then split them into three groups. One punched a bag while thinking about their offender (the "venting" group), another punched the bag for exercise, and the third sat quietly."

Nearly forty years of empirical research finds that venting anger through physical aggression does not extinguish anger but intensifies it by strengthening neural links between rage and violent response. Experimental studies show participants who hit punching bags while ruminating about an offender later behave more aggressively than those who do not. An entire commercial industry markets rage rooms and catharsis experiences, generating hundreds of millions annually, based on the catharsis myth. Techniques that reduce physiological arousal—deep breathing and voluntary solitude—calm the body faster and reduce aggression more effectively than aggressive expression.

Read at Psychology Today