Have a 400-page report to read and analyze in the next 45 minutes?
Need to make a decision on a huge contract?
Struggling to figure out the best argument to win a pay raise?
Try getting pissed off.
It's a risky strategy, but according to new research on anger and decision making, it may just work.
"Cold anger does motivate us to think more carefully," says Wesley Moons, a psychology graduate student at the University of California at Santa Barbara whose research shows that angry people do a better job of analyzing information.
Mr. Moons realizes he's rowing against the tide. Most people believe anger leads to rash decisions, and past research has found that anger decreases trust and increases stereotyping. But he was curious to see whether anger really deserves its bad reputation.
In a series of experiments, Mr. Moons and his colleagues first made their research subjects angry. Some were asked to write about a time when they were enraged; others had their goals in life harshly critiqued. (The control group wrote about a neutral experience and did not have their goals criticized.)
Then the study subjects read one of two essays. Both essays argued that university students have good financial habits, but one essay was poorly argued while the other was compelling. The angry research subjects did a much better job of discriminating between weak and strong arguments.
Mr. Moons, whose research was published in the May issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, offers two theories on why angry people seem better at analyzing information.
First, humans tend to respond to threats with careful thinking. If you're strolling along without a care in the world, you may not need to be on top of your mental game. If a hungry sabre-toothed tiger jumps out into your path, you may feel afraid or angry, but you'll definitely need to make some quality decisions if you're going to survive.
Mr. Moons's second theory is that when people are in a bad mood - what psychologists call a "negative affect"- they subconsciously seek out information to cheer themselves up. So angry people may appear smarter because they're analyzing information more closely in search of some good news that will make them feel better.
The upside of anger only goes so far, Mr. Moons acknowledges. "Obviously anger can have harmful effects," he says. "That may be due more to emotions accompanying anger," such as jealousy, insecurity or a desire for revenge.
And he notes that his research subjects fell more on the annoyed side of angry - they weren't provoked into a blind rage. Although he recalls one university student subject really took offence at being told her life goals were dull and uninspired.
"This girl turned around to me and said, 'I'm not boring! I'm in a sorority!' "
Vancouver-based anger-management counsellor Alistair Moes agrees that the emotion can be a constructive force, as long as people know how to get angry without getting mean or violent.
"Gandhi was probably kind of pissed off at the British, but what he did was completely non-violent," Mr. Moes says. "You can hold anger and compassion at the same time."
A bit of anger may boost your decision-making powers, but you don't want to let it show at work, advises Bruce Snow, a partner in the Halifax-based human resources firm Robertson Surrette.
"Overt emotion really distracts from your credibility," Mr. Snow says. "If anger is being radiated, even if you have sound arguments, your effectiveness is really down."
