Emotions in childhood are always changing. The time between being a toddler into late adolescence, is the window in which emotions are manifested. As early as infancy and early childhood, depending on how our caregivers are emotionally connected with us, how they display their emotions and whether their emotions are happy or angry are crucial factors in determining the outcome of the child.
Theories on the origin and development of emotions range from theories that regard emotions as being innate and biologic mechanisms for survival, to theories that argue that emotions are a socially adapted method of survival. The ability to express emotion in an effective manner is important to the relationships, treatment, and development of a child. Expressing anger in an effective manner would consist of the ability to restrain socially unacceptable behavior. Behavior that deviates from the norm and is not tolerated include acts of violence, aggressive behavior or aggressive speech.
Children must learn to effectively communicate their feelings, accomplishing their desired goal, or addressing perceived obstacle in a controlled, effective manner. Emotional expressions of children are important in determining feelings, thoughts, and the existence of problems as a child. Common disorders detected in childhood are often categorized by problems with emotions, these include but are not limited to: an inability to surpass emotional milestones for their age, such as an inability to determine emotion in others, inability to control behaviors and an inability to be sensitive to emotions. When a child effectively expresses their emotions to their caregiver and in social settings, it helps others understand their feelings, even before they can express themselves with verbal language.
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The development of emotion is especially crucial to infant, toddler and childhood development because it shapes the way in which emotions in social interactions and opinions about the self and others will manifest themselves once the child reaches adolescence and adulthood. Emotional intelligence is linked to social success in children, which carries on into adolescence. Emotions are also closely tied to children and adolescents physical and mental health. It is crucial that children have learned and express proper display rules that are specific to their cultural and social norms. The social norms about the expressions of emptions vary determining on culture and location. Rejection from peers is a common risk for children who fail to learn emotional intelligence and regulation. (Clarke-Stewart, & Parke, 2016.)
It is important to note that although anger is a normal and common emotion in childhood, it can have negative consequences if not facilitated in an effective manner. School-aged children have described the intensity of their anger as strong rather than moderate or low (Krahé & Rohlf, 2015). For children, emotional regulation, display rules, as well as other socially learned behaviors are critical for their ability to control emotional arousals and behavior. By the time a child begins school, they ought to have already learned strategies that enable them to regulate their emotions.
They practice using new strategies to regulate their expressions of anger in accordance to social norm of display rules. Studies have proven that deficits in anger regulation are related to various problematic outcomes in childhood, including aggression and peer rejection (Krahé & Rohlf, 2015). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has a high prevalence amongst children, namely in the United States. Aggressive behavior towards peers, guardians and authority figures is just one of the qualities attributed to this disorder; Children and adolescents with ADHD regularly exhibit a loss of peers or rejection of peers around the time of puberty.
Their feelings of irritability, impulsiveness and aggression cause a rejection from peers. Children with ADHD usually fall behind developmentally in relation to others in their age group, meaning that they do not always learn to manage emotions parallel to children in their age group. Although ADHD is the most common disorder possessing this characteristic, many other behavioral and cognitive disorders facilitate an inability to control or manage anger; These include but are not limited to: conduct disorders, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Asperger Syndrome and Bi-polar disorder.
Personally, I have witnessed the negative outcomes due to the lack of emotional regulation. While in elementary school through grades first, second, third and fourth, I was in the same class with a particular classmate, we will refer to him as “John” for the following story. John was an overall healthy child, he had a good family and no obvious signs deviating from developmental or cognitive norms. I recently have just learned that John was adopted from Russia at about age 3 (I will later use John as an example for explaining how development in infancy and very early childhood as well as biological factors may influence the emotion of anger.) John always would scare others when he got angry, he could be happy and then it was as if a cloud of anger floated over him causing him to act in this manner. He simply couldn’t help himself when he got angry, he would blame and hit others to cope with his emotional distress.
Teachers often tried to teach John different methods to express or regulate his feelings of anger. Healthy coping skills were not learned by John out of the classroom, because his behavior would not change despite teachers attempts. I don’t think his parents truly recognized the threat of having an aggressively angered child. As we grew older the unregulated reaction towards anger John had become automatic to him. I even considered him as more frightening and unapproachable than he was in the years prior. In third grade during recess I was on a swinging, monkey bars contraption, when I was aggressively pushed off the platform from the back onto my face by John. John wanted to use the monkey bars and his appraisal of the situation allowed him to view me as the factor that was preventing him from achieving his personal goal.
The essential function of anger is a readiness to act in order to overcome an obstacle that is preventing a person from achieving their desired goal (Krahé & Rohlf, 2015). Johns appraisal of the situation enabled a preparedness in him to overcome his perceived obstacle. If John had demonstrated emotional regulation, he might have instead used a different tactic to reach his goal, such as ask me or be patient in waiting his turn. Instead his behavior reflected his lack of emotional regulation. I knew John throughout high school, he argued with teachers, would have emotional outbursts, he used aggression towards classmates and spoke with an aggressive demeanor during class, often not contributing to learning. He was rejected by most peers. It was upsetting seeing his struggle with regulating his anger follow him into adulthood.
Anger is a recognized as a primary emotion, meaning other sub categories stem off of it. Sub categories are a dynamic between our different emotions, they are most often unique to the human species compared to primary emotion. Sub-categories of anger have the quality of anger integrated within them these include jealous anger, irrational anger, violent anger, reactive anger, and much more. The emotion of anger alone is primary, all primary emotions are not unique to just the human species alone, as it is easy to observe behaviors of the primary emotions of anger, surprise, and happiness among animals.
Anger is regarded as being a biological and instinctual quality, it has also been theorized as a socially adapted mechanism to handle adverse situations in social domains. Since aggressive behaviors amongst animals are attributed to feelings of anger, this causes us to not only attribute the feeling of anger as animalistic quality but to also justify and regard feelings of anger as being innate biological qualities. This has led to theories that reject or fail to recognize why we, as a species, have adapted the use of behaviors of anger and aggression within social domains in order to accomplish a certain goal. Humans use emotions, more specifically anger, as a mechanism to increase their personal survival by facilitating the communication between one another. The role of anger can be separated into two different goals, it first works by readying us with a physiological preparedness or pressure to overcome an obstacle or a difficult situation.
The second goal of anger is to function to communicate differences and conflicts in interpersonal and affective bonds. The behaviors and acts that may accompany the emotion of anger can be understood in a symbolic and cultural framework in regard to social contexts. Anger cannot be understood by defining categories of specific stimuli, interactions, or obstacles that universally provoke anger. The appraisal and formation of anger is dependent all on a complex cognitive process with specific social and cultural orientation. Comprehensively, the expression of emotion is regarded as being highly reduced while existing in an environment where external threats are decreased, and adaptation is more and more dependent on group interactions and a complex and detailed set of cognitive operations. (Williams, 2017).
However it is important to examine the instance of actions performed by individuals who are angered, but display non-physical and non-personal displays of aggression as a response. Psychologist James Averill surveyed humans on the everyday experience of anger. He concluded the idea that anger is most often linked to the act of physical aggression, however there are methods that include more complex reactions. In humans some forms of aggression may be done without feelings of anger, for example, professional killing and also, people may become angry without exhibiting aggression.
The social dynamic amongst humans is so complex that we cannot simplify emotions as being like ones we observe animals expressing, instead they have a much deeper meaning and function to them. Averill explains that in order to understand emotion, we must first consider what emotions accomplish socially, once this is understood, we will realize the complexity of emotions and their social meaning. The ideas focusing on the connection between anger and aggression are mostly adopted by biologically oriented theorists. Certainly, the human species is itself fascinating, but in no way is it more complex or sophisticated than the biology and interaction of any other species.
We can only be spectators while watching animals display their adapted complex communication structures that we as a human species are not capable of understand in such terms as we understand our own social structure. Just as complex and unique as social interaction is amongst other species, the human species none the less displays equally complex methods of communication and survival. The ability to speak and understand language is a unique and dynamic form of interaction that is specific to the human species; equally complex is the use and display of emotions socially. To understand the emotion of anger in full we must take fully into consideration a social analysis of emotion (Averill 1983.)
I find that the most interest theory that has been used to explain anger is the Social Constructivist Theory. This theory fails to recognize the role of biology and adaptation playing a factor in emotion. Important aspects of this theory have most notably been adopted by James Averill. This theory excludes the notion that emotions are primary biological. The Social Constructivist theory instead asserts that emotions are culturally developed products that owe their function and coherence to learned social roles. The most difficult emotions to apply this framework to are fear and anger, as they are seen and often felt as prototypically innate, primitive emotions. This theory argues that anger is complex rather than a survival adaptation, it is instead controlled by a dynamic of socially determined appraisals.
The Social Constructivist theory argues that anger serves both an interpersonal and social function by playing a positive constructional goal in our social relationships. Anger is defined by Averill (1982)Cornelius as being determined by an appraisal that one has intentionally been wronged, unjustifiably by another person. Moral judgement is the highest determinant of this appraisal. Whether one considers an act to be wrong purposefully, intentionally and the identified degree of wrongness is determined by socially learned and culturally reinforced standards of behavior. This implies that the method in which anger is interpreted and determined by are all developed by social learning which is manifested in childhood and throughout adolescence. This theory gives an explain to how the emotion with the most obvious adaptive function, fear, can be a socially learned aspect.
Children are often taught by social learning to fear activities in which people of their social group disapprove of. People possess a set of social schemas that are unique to their social experience and culture, this holds the information and interpretations that they’ve acquired through observed content on anger. Social rules concerning anger are learned by observing appropriate and acceptable, responses to anger, acts of aggression, elicitation of anger, speech, retaliation, type/group of people that is acceptable to be angry toward and reactions of physiological arousal. In westernized cultures, retribution is considered social norm as a response to being intentionally wronged.
Although according to this theory, it would fail at serving an interpersonal role if it caused the same unjustifiable, intentionally wrong behavior that provoked the feelings of anger initially. Instead, anger is understood as something that is out of control and primitive once it is experienced. This idea is even reinforced by extensive evolutionary and biologic research and adopted as a explanation to the social role in anger elicited behavior. According to this theory the idea of anger being an aspect that takes control over those angered is a culturally created and reinforced idea and stereotype. This aids the interpersonal, socially constructive role of anger, as it allows retribution to be justified by social rules and standards. Finally, anger functions socially, according to this theory, by regulating interpersonal relationships by establishing boundaries of what is considered acceptable and not. (Cornelius 2000)
Traumatic events that disturb the normal course of an individuals’ life many times have unpredictable outcomes in cognitive and social function. Normal displays of emotion and normal behavior can be altered due to stress. When people suffer from a traumatic event, their basic assumptions of the world may be challenged and disoriented. Emotional reactions in response to disturbing events function as a coping mechanism for establishing an individual sense of stability and relief. Often in community involved crises, a sense of anger, unity and proactivity is followed by tragic events. Recent research suggests that this negative reaction to traumatic events actually serves as a catalyst for growth.
The outcome for adult individuals who experience traumatic events are unpredictable. The National Comorbidity Survey has estimated that 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women in the United States are exposed to at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. However, most trauma-exposed individuals provide a negative response in the immediate aftermath of trauma, their symptoms usually then reduce after a few weeks. On the other hand, for a substantial minority of people, the symptoms persist and may develop into a variety of several psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with an estimated 6.4% of adults experiencing this at some point in their life.
The experience of traumatic loss, life threat, and injury have been associated with elevated levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), this is important to the study of emotion because symptoms include an inability to regulate physiological arousal of emotions, emotional regulation and behavioral reactions to these emotions felt. Research has indicated that PTSD has enabled the development of maladaptive emotional responses and unhealthy coping mechanisms. However, contrary research concludes that anger actually can serve as a positive coping tool for growth after a traumatic event. In a study following the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, a study was conducted which established a curvilinear relationship between PTSS and post-traumatic growth (PTG.)
In conclusion, those who experienced a moderate amount of PTSS had the highest level of PTG. It is possible that individuals may have to experience a moderate amount of PTSS in order to yield the most growth from trauma. The physiologic stress from anger may be channeled into self fulfilling behaviors such as, exercising, taking up a new hobby or giving their attention to religious aspects. Interesting enough, it was found that anger was more strongly positively related to PTG than to PTSS after media exposure to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Millions of people at once experienced an overwhelming feeling of threat and danger by a horrific attack on hundreds of people of their own community and culture.
However, individuals in this study were not directly exposed to the traumatic event, and experienced anger much different from those that experienced the trauma first hand. However, anger helped prompt constructive action and aided in relieving the population from traumatic stress. Anger does not have to be viewed solely as negative, it is able to be manifested into proactive behavior and has been effective in increasing the support for nonviolent and effective action after a protracted conflict. Anger also enables people with a sense of conviction that has the ability to mobilize adaptive behavior, it can help aid the cognitive and behavioral avoidance of aversive situations.
In conclusion, the experience and expression of anger may contribute to both positive and negative outcomes after trauma exposure. (Beagley, Galovski, Peterson & Strasshofer, 2018).
References
- The Role of Emotion in Children’s Learning
- Understanding the Development of Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: Implications for Education
- Emotion Regulation in Early Childhood: Biological, Supportive, and Risk Factors
- Verywell Mind: How Parents Influence Early Emotional Development
- Developmental Psychology: The Socialization of Emotions within American Families
