Understanding Anger: The Key to Reducing Physical Punishment

Anger–We have all felt it, heard it, and seen it in ourselves and others. In this discussion, I want to look at the role anger has in physical punishment. I suggest that by better understanding anger, we have a better chance of understanding and decreasing physical punishment. So, first, we will explore what anger is from a variety of perspectives, and then focus on its role in physical punishment.

What Is Anger?

Anger seems so often to be misunderstood. Anger is a feeling. Feelings cause behaviors.

Feelings (or “affects”) are reactions to internal and external stimuli, contributing to our motivations, behaviors, communication, and emotional development.

Anger is one of our nine basic feelings. The others are interest and enjoyment (positive feelings); surprise (resetting); and distress, fear, shame, disgust (reaction to unpleasant tastes), and dissmell (reaction to unpleasant odors) (negative feelings) (Tomkins, 1991, Holinger, 2025).

Anger, like all feelings, is a signal – to oneself and to others. Anger could be termed an SOS signal, a call for help: “Something is wrong here!” As Silvan Tomkins notes, “All the negative affects trouble human beings deeply…Anger is problematic above all” (1991, p.111).

And as Aristotle noted in The Nicomachean Ethics in 340 BC, “Anyone can get angry – that is easy…but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.”

Anger is linked to the affect of distress. Everyone has a stimulus threshold that can trigger distress and then anger. So anger is excessive distress – “too muchness.”

With infants and young children, any excessive sustained increase in the level of stimulation, such as a bright light, loud noise, hunger, fatigue, or illness, may activate distress: annoyance, irritability, arched eyebrows, corners of the mouth turned down, tears and crying, and so on. If the stimulation persists and heightens, anger is triggered: frowning eyebrows, narrowed eyes, red face, the roar of rage.

With older children and adults, the stimuli may be quite varied: stress involving school pressures, parental expectations, peers; work, children, spouse; physical pain; conscious and unconscious fantasies; and so on. Distress increases, and annoyance, irritability, and snippiness can morph into anger.

Anger might be termed a quantitative affect: There is “too muchness,” too much stress and stimulation. The term stressed out is appropriate. Stress may increase incrementally, the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Things may be going along reasonably well, but then one event after another begins to push the envelope toward anger. Any one, or two, or three of these issues might be easily handled, but too many of them piled up exceed the individual’s tension-regulatory capacity and lead to anger. These processes have important implications for the regulation of feelings and behaviors.

It is interesting to note that any affect, positive or negative, if excessive enough, can produce anger. For example, too much excitement can lead to anger; if a decrease in stimulation (enjoyment) is too much, this can lead to boredom, irritability, and anger; a too-intense startle episode can result in fear and anger. Anger is also a final common pathway for all the negative affects. Excessive distress, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell can all ultimately trigger an anger response. This is important clinically and in daily life, especially with respect to understanding anger that may have roots in excessive fear or shame.

Anger is also what might be termed a contagious affect—anger in one person can readily elicit anger in another. How and why? How—probably because someone else’s anger adds to another’s own level of distress. Think of a car honking behind you, or road rage. This increase in stimulation can feel like an attack, an assault, or a warning about your own behavior. Why contagious? Probably, from an evolutionary perspective, because anger in another person creates enough stimulation to elicit a startle response, or distress, or anger, in order to respond to a potential threat.

Although anger may be the basic affect, there are many words used to describe different aspects of anger. This can sometimes enhance or confuse the understanding of anger in clinical as well as everyday circumstances. Consider, for example, annoyance, irritability, hostility, rage, viciousness, aggression, and destruction.

Whose Anger Is Involved?

Who is getting angry during episodes of physical punishment, that is, spanking, hitting, pinching, and so on? Nearly everyone! Or in other words, whose feelings of distress are increasing to anger in response to these behaviors?

Quite a few people may be involved. First of all, the child him or herself. Second, whoever is doing the hitting – parents, caregivers, and so on. Observers may feel distress and get angry.

Sometimes the distress and anger are subtle. In addition, the rage directed at the child may be accompanied by a sense of enjoyment, for a variety of reasons.

The major issues here involve the number of people who can become involved and be angry, with potentially increasing distress and actions.

Where Does This Anger Come From?

From whom and what does this anger originate? What kind of distress – internal or external, past or present – triggers the anger?

For example, the anger can come:

• From the child becoming increasingly distressed about having to do or stop something.
• From the parents, due to the child’s behavior, or perhaps because of what was done to them by their own parents and/or caregivers.
• From anyone’s own internal world; rage at the child for disobeying; fear that the child might get hurt, e.g., running into the street.

The possibilities are endless.

Stopping Physical Punishment

1. The first order of business is understanding the affect of anger. Feelings (affects) cause behaviors. Anger begins with the feeling of distress, and as distress increases, the classic signs of anger emerge, and then rage. Anger is too muchness, too much stimulation, too much disorganization.
2. Second, the feeling of interest (curiosity) is extremely useful. What set off the anger?
   Why now? Does it happen frequently? Can the issues be talked about?
3. Third, with the children, discussion can be: What can distract the youngster from this increasing disorganization? A song, a game, a funny noise, a lovey or teddy bear type of thing?

Wrapping Up

Humans have three basic information processing systems: Feelings, cognition, and language. These three information processing systems can all be useful in understanding and dealing with anger (Holinger, 2025; Tomkins, 1991).

Feelings contribute to our various behaviors and motivations. Cognition includes thinking, self-reflection, learning, and more. Language involves putting words and symbols to feelings.

Also, the process of introspection is useful and crucial in understanding and dealing with physical punishment. Being able to look inside ourselves – using feelings, cognition, and language – can make a world of difference in dealing with anger and curing physical punishment. In addition, being empathic with others in the midst of these events can be extraordinarily helpful. This is called vicarious introspection (Kohut, 1959).