School Connectedness, Anger Behaviors, and Relationships of Violent and Nonviolent American Youth

Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, Oct-Dec 2004 by Thomas, Sandra P, Smith, Helen

Anger-management programs can help reduce students' tendencies to solve problems with physical or relational aggression. Such programs focus on arousal management (calming down with relaxation or meditation techniques) and constructive anger expression (using words, not fists, to settle disputes). As shown in this study, discussion of anger is inversely correlated with feeling angry enough to hit someone. Talking out the angry feelings with an empathie listener-friend, parent, or counselor-is a healthy choice. Anger discussion was positively correlated with being liked by classmates, suggesting that students who feel more secure in their interpersonal relationships may feel more secure in disclosing negative emotions. Greater use of anger discussion was associated with decreased suppression or somatization of anger and decreased loneliness.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has proved to be effective with a wide variety of angry clients, including aggressive children and juvenile delinquents (Beck, 1999). Most successful school programs, such as the Peaceful Conflict Resolution and Violence Prevention Curriculum (DuRant, Barkin, & Krowchuk, 2001) and the Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways Program (Meyer, Farrell, Northup, Kung, & Plybon, 2000), are based on cognitive-behavioral concepts. Tailoring such programs to specific subgroups, based on gender and/or race, may be beneficial, although more research is necessary.

In the present study, no racial differences were observed on any of the anger expression variables. These findings are consistent with studies of college students by Harris (1996) in which there were almost no differences in anger behaviors between blacks and whites and few differences between Hispanics and whites, although whites did acknowledge having committed a greater number of physically aggressive acts (such as slapping and hitting) over their lifetime. The findings were discrepant, however, from those of Deffenbacher and Swaim (1999), Hauber et al. (1998), and Reyes et al. (2003).

Gender differences in this sample were consistent with previous research. Virtually all studies show boys scoring higher on anger-out. The tendency of girls to score higher on the FAS anger symptoms scale has been demonstrated in numerous previous studies (e.g., Thomas & Williams, 1991), although reasons are unclear. The anger symptoms scale includes both bodily concomitants of anger arousal, such as headache, and the anxiety dimension of anger experience. Girls could score higher either because anger is a more anxiety-producing experience for them or because they are more attuned to their bodily reactions. Being able to talk to someone about the anger, however, lessened the amount of anger symptoms. Not all studies find gender differences. Among African-American youths given the FAS by Armstead and Clark (2002), no gender differences were found in anger-in, anger-out, or anger discussion (the anger symptoms subscale was not administered to the participants).