Tuesday April 6 12:52 PM ET

Venting anger tied to more aggression

By Christine Cosgrove

NEW YORK, Apr 06 (Reuters Health) -- In the movie ``Analyze This,'' the advice Billy Crystal gives Robert DeNiro -- to vent his anger by punching a pillow -- is all wrong, according to a trio of psychologists who recently studied anger and aggression.

Psychologists Brad Bushman and Angela Stack of Iowa State University and Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University found that people who vent their anger by hitting a punching bag are more likely later to strike out at the human object of their anger or an innocent bystander.

Crystal's character should have advised counting to 10, or going out and doing something nice for somebody, Bushman told Reuters Health. ``Or if you're really angry, take Thomas Jefferson's advice and count to 100,'' he added.

Popular belief in the catharsis theory remains strong ''despite the theory's dismal record in research findings,'' write Bushman and his colleagues in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Catharsis -- the so-called therapeutic purging of pent-up feelings or emotions by expressing those feelings -- was popular with Aristotle, then Freud, and now 'pop' psychologists and the media, but has little scientific validity, they report.

``One likely reason for the continued widespread belief in catharsis is that the mass media continue to endorse the view that expressing anger or aggressive feelings is healthy, constructive and relaxing, whereas restraining oneself creates internal tension that is unhealthy and bound to lead to an eventual blowup,'' Bushman's group writes.

``The movie is just one more example of this,'' he said.

In a study of 360 undergraduate students, the authors first established that hitting a punching bag does not produce a cathartic effect. It increases rather than decreases subsequent aggression.

The investigators also found that exposure to a message promoting catharsis -- in this case, a bogus newspaper article -- increased an angry person's desire to hit a punching bag. ''Thus, media messages pertaining to catharsis do seem able to influence behavior preferences,'' the study authors note.

Finally, the researchers found that the pro-cathartic message led to increased aggression, not only toward the person who had provoked the participant's anger, but also toward an innocent third person.

Those people who did not hit the punching bag were less, not more, aggressive than people who ``vented'' their anger by hitting the bag.

``Our findings suggest that media messages advocating catharsis may be worse than useless,'' Bushman and colleagues conclude. ``They encourage people to vent their anger through aggressive action, and perhaps they even foster the displacement of aggression toward new, innocent third parties.''

SOURCE: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999;76:367-376.