Anger Can Help: A Transactional Model and Three Pathways of the Experience and Expression of Anger

• Author: Ryan B. Seedall,Kierea C. Meloy‐Miller,J. Logan Dicus,Mark H. Butler
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12311

Anger Can Help: A Transactional Model and Three

Pathways of the Experience and Expression of

Anger

MARK H. BUTLER*

,1

KIEREA C. MELOY-MILLER

†,1

RYAN B. SEEDALL

‡

J. LOGAN DICUS*

Anger is a significant human emotion with far-reaching implications for individuals

and relationships. We propose a transactional model of anger that highlights its relational

relevance and potentially positive function, in addition to problematic malformations. By

evolutionary design, physical, self-concept, or attachment threats all similarly trigger dif-

fuse physiological arousal, psychologically experienced as anger-emotion. Anger is first a

signaling and motivational system. Anger is then formed to affirming, productive use or

malformed to destructive ends. A functional, prosocial approach to anger organizes it for

protective and corrective personal and relational adaptation. In our model, threat percep-

tion interacts with a person’s view of self in relation to other to produce helpful or harmful

anger. Inflated or collapsed views of self in relation to other produce distinct manifesta-

tions of destructive anger that are harmful to self, other, and relationship. Conversely, a

balanced view of self in relation to other promotes constructive anger and catalyzes self,

other, and relationship healing. Clinical use of the model to shape healing personal and

relational contact with anger is explored.

Keywords: Threat Perception; Anger; Relationship Correcti on; Adaptation; Healing;

Forgiveness; Constructive Anger; Destructive Anger; View of Self in Relation to Other

Fam Proc 57:817–835, 2018

Many people view anger as always harmful. Perhaps this is well-deserved, since

in its biological, impulsive, unreconstructed form, the expression of anger is

often profoundly hostile. Yet corrective feedback is essential for relationships to adapt

and survive, and anger represents relationship feedback. We hypothesize that the

experience and expression of anger can be benevolent rather than hostile. The care-

ful shaping of anger allows it to be organized and expressed productively, and can

guide corrective action, repair, and healing following interactional collision. Such a

benevolent anger doesn’t look like anger as we typically think of it, lacking as it

does the element of hostility.

In this paper, we draw attention to anger as a functional human emotion in relationship

context. We further conceptualize that while the origins or substrates of anger are

*School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

†

Balance Health and Healing, Pleasant Grove, UT.

‡

Utah State University, Logan, UT.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mark H. Butler, Brigham Young Univer-

sity, JFSB 2063, Provo, UT 84602. E-mail: Mark.Butler@BYU.edu

1

Equal authors.

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Family Process, Vol. 57, No. 3, 2018 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12311

biological and psychological, anger is subsequently systemically and contextually shaped

and serves a relational purpose equal to its individual one. We trace three pathways of

anger, and our model anchors anger’s pathways to relational dynamics. Namely, a sys-

temic or relational view of self in relation to other (SIRO)—rather than a biological or psy-

chological dynamic—is used to give account for the three pathways of anger.

The three pathways of anger model both confirms and counters common beliefs about

anger—acknowledging its potential to be harmful while also developing a model of helpful

anger. We adopt a functional perspective to make the case that anger is not necessarily

destructive to relationships (Gottman, 1993a, 1994). Rather, it is the seemingly unlikely

but authentic companion to healing, including the component process of forgiveness

(Greenberg, Warwar, & Malcolm, 2010). Forgiveness is the more transparently virtuous

component of relationship repair, but we believe anger is an important experience that

can be constructively organized, shaped, and enacted as a helpful ally to individuals and

their relationships. Furthermore, we believe the ability to monitor, regulate, and benefi-

cently express anger is tightly integrated with forgiveness, thus making anger an essen-

tial element of a holistic affective, cognitive, and behavioral system for relationship

adaptation and repair. As an integrated component of healing, we view anger as indis-

pensable and hierarchically organized in relation to other elements of healing, including

subsequent forgiveness work.

We claim that in relationship context anger is an evolutionary adaptive signaling and

motivational system both to the individual and to the relationship. Anger’s signaling is

intended to motivate self-protective and relationship-corrective responses promoting

change and healing following relational injury. Yet we acknowledge and the model we pro-

pose accounts for the reality that anger may or may not be organized and expressed pro-

ductively.

THE INEVITABILITY OF TRANSACTIONAL INJURY AND UBIQUITY OF ANGER

We begin with the presumption, supported by attachment theory and research (Bowlby,

1988; Cassidy & Shaver, 1999, 2008; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), that by evolutionary

design humans gravitate toward intimate social connections (Fishbane, 2007, 2013, 2016).

For our survival, we are a relationship species. Thus, human beings are hardwired for con-

necting socially (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999; Fishbane, 2007, 2013, 2016) as well as for sus-

taining individual identity and integrity of being. Organismically we remain sentient

individuals holding fiercely to individual identity, expression, and survival. This tension

and simultaneous striving for both relational symmetry and safety in belonging, juxta-

posed with individual being and survival, guarantees moments of deep, meaningful con-

nection as well as moments of intense, painful relational difference, discord,

disconnection, and offense. While we strive for coordinated social interaction, our differ-

ences mean that connection will always be complicated and that occasional frictions and

abrasions—offenses—are inevitable.

Nevertheless, our differentiated individual identities give our connections existential

meaning, and so despite complications, we persist in our efforts to maintain our individu-

ality and reconcile our relationships. As a species, survival-focused evolution “programs”

us both for social connection (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999) and for sustaining individual iden-

tity and integrity of being. Significantly, evolution also programs us for navigating this

tension and its relational repercussions and exigencies, in part through the experience

and emotion of anger.

Given the enduring tension, friction, and collision of our individual and relational

being, offenses are inevitable and recurring, and enduring intimate relationships would

be impossible without mechanisms for relational correction, repair, and healing, of whic h

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