eli5: Why do we destroy/feel the urge to destroy things when angry? How does that relieve anger/stress?
In: Other
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Its a way to regain a sense of control.
When things aren’t going your way, at least you can break that thing and reaffirm to yourself that you do in fact still have SOME agency in the world.
From evolutionary perspective — something that makes us angry is probably dangerous/harmful to us; by destroying it, we increase the chances of our survival (and survival of those around us — our offspring).
In modern times, this instinct is no longer useful — it’s actively harmful.
I think it is a combination of many factors. I would break things in a rage. Now I throw facial tissues when I’m angry. Gets that muscle tension but nothing gets wrecked
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I doubt anyone really knows. But I think the urge is actually just an urge to use our body in a smashy way and the broken things are usually collateral. Maybe the items (or people) we choose to destroy are chosen because the sight of them increases our feeling to want to destroy past the threshold, or maybe they just happen to be in front of us when we get to that point.
Interestingly, there’s been research now to show that utilising violence, in any form, as an outlet for anger actually increases the likelihood of committing violent offences, particularly in males. I’ll have a look for the link but it mentioned that even “punching pillows” is not a healthy release for anger and can instead fuel outbursts. Instead, it’s recommended to use meditation, breathing exercises and nonviolent emotional regulation techniques to move beyond anger. All this new evidence goes against what most of us learned growing up!
I’m not a psychologist, but my amateur guess would be that it correlates to an evolutionary trauma/ stress response, your brain can’t tell that there isn’t an immediate threat to your life because your bills are due and your bank account is empty, but it still is flooding your body with stress hormones, so you lash out and break something as if the glass on the countertop is a wolf trying to kill and eat you in the woods.
When we’re angry, oftentimes there’s a possibility of physical violence. Our bodies fill us with hormones that prime us for physical exertion and punching things.
Except in modern times we can’t just punch people. There are consequences, and we’re socialized against it. But our bodies still want to vent that energy somewhere.
Because the world we evolved in was less abstract and complicated than the one we’ve made. Anger and stress are your body’s reaction to something being wrong. Like you’re going to the water hole and this is where the sabertooth cats hang out. Or you shared food with brother-monkey but he isn’t sharing food back. Stress keeps you on edge because your body expects to have to react to something. Anger is your body’s reaction to a threat, whether overt (like a predator) or indirect (being socially victimized), because your body expects to at least threaten violence, if not partake in it.
Socially, primates do a lot of posturing and threatening before doing actual violence. Yelling, stomping, slapping bodies, running around ripping up branches and throwing up dirt. Chimps and gorillas do this, often just as a bluff or a way to reinforce the status quo. Most likely a big “anger display” like that was sufficiently useful that our body tells us we’ve fixed the problem when we’ve done it. So calming hormones like endorphins evolved to de-escalate such violence, which we perceive as feeling good once we’ve exhausted ourselves.
Our bodies didn’t evolve to deal with whether we’re investing enough money in our retirement accounts, or whether our kids are going to have good enough grades to get into college. So our stress and anger responses are now firing off at “threats” that we can’t solve by baring our teeth and ripping branches off of trees.
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