Low social status makes you angry faster

Poor people are angry faster

13/12/2013

If we humans did not feel emotions like fear, shame or anger, it would certainly be harder for our counterparts to get smart. Without emotions we would most likely not be viable. But not all people immediately react in a situation that causes emotional feelings. Not everyone who feels anger shows it.

Some people can control their sensations better than others. It does not matter in which country of the world you live. In anger, for example, social status seems to play a role in expressing it.

People who tend to occupy a lower position at work seem to express anger more often and more intensively than those higher up the corporate ladder. One explanation for this is that people with lower social status are far less likely to pursue and ultimately achieve their goals and plans. They are more often regulated, blocked and criticized from above. If one then counts among the people who do not have such a strong frustration tolerance, tantrums occur quite often. This behavior has been observed in US-Americans in past studies.

Outbursts of anger are culturally different
But this behavior is probably also cultural. The researchers around Jiyoung Park and Shinobu Kitayama from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor found that Japanese in higher social positions are more likely to let their anger run wild. For the investigations, the scientists compared the data of more than 1000 subjects from the two countries. The subjects themselves had to assess their own status and state how often they became verbally or physically aggressive. The results have the scientists in the journal „emotion“ released.

Conclusion: Thus, taking into account cultural circumstances, in addition to the degree of frustration, the social position within a society plays a role when people show their anger to the outside. Culturally, showing anger in Japan is rated differently than in the US. In Japan, it is more of a privilege to show his emotion. There, people usually hold back their own feelings about others. Only those individuals who have important social status are allowed to show their anger. The status defined by the company is decided differently than in the USA. (Fr)

Picture: S. Hofschlaeger