Sending Angry Emails Just Makes You Angrier

An anonymous reader writes: Sending a blistering email can be cathartic. People consistently report feeling better after venting, and doing so over email is no exception. But researchers find those who vent their anger tend to only become angrier and more aggressive, and doing so in an impersonal way like email only makes it worse. "E-venting is particularly risky, experts say. We think it's private because we can do it in a secluded place, like our bed while we're in our pajamas. We have our phones with us all the time so we often e-vent before we've had a chance to calm down. A rant put out via the Internet is a click away from being shared." Combine this with how we typically sound angrier in print, and can't see feedback from our targets, it can lead to more volatile situations than we intended.

Comments

Re:E-Vent

[hey!]

An old trick is to write the email and not send it, or send it to yourself. That way you get some catharsis, and can send a more civil email later (or no email at all, handle it politely in person).

I don't believe that kind of catharsis actually exists. People conflate the relief from the momentary impulse to do something with relief from the underlying anger. They're not the same thing. I think writing the angry email reviewing all the reasons the other guy is a contemptible, bad person is actually practicing being angry at him. And anything you practice comes more and more naturally with time.

Let's say someone cuts you off while you're driving, and lets say you start venting at the other driver -- maybe you chase him for a bit, yelling at him. Does that, in your experience, actually make you calmer and more rational toward the other driver? *I* think you're actually prolonging the fear and anger of a momentary encounter that would be best put behind you. It also reinforces the underlying irrational assumptions that turn ordinarily rational people into aggressive, reactive drivers. What you *should* do when you get cut off is immediately remind yourself that everybody, even good, considerate drivers, have bad days. All it takes is a single instant where your attention lapses -- and that happens to everyone occasionally, even you. And even if the other guy's a bad driver, by the time you realized what happened the encounter was already over. Chances are you'll never encounter that guy again.

In other words deal with the fallacious belief that very momentary negative interaction calls for immediate and aggressive response. Then you can make a rational decision about what the optimal response would be. You can't reason with an angry person, and when that angry person is you you can't reason, period.

So I'd change the old trick to this: write a conciliatory email and then sleep on it before sending the real one. The reason for not sending the conciliatory email right away is that you don't want to do anything irreversible under the influence of strong emotion. Once you've dealt with the anger you can do a better job of being reasonably assertive; you don't have to let people walk all over you buy you do need some perspective when pushing back.

Re:HOW DARE YOU!

[LaurenCates]

I find writing angry emails to be cathartic.

Sending them, and then getting responses back that escalate the situation, is not.