Anger is a natural emotion that develops over time to help us deal with threats and challenges. It’s like our body’s way of getting ready for a fight or overcoming difficulties. When we feel angry, our body goes into a mode that prepares us to either face an enemy or run away from a tough situation.

How we express anger is believed to be a natural reaction. However, there are societal “display rules” that dictate when it’s okay to show anger and when it’s not. Another aspect of feeling angry involves specific thoughts. 

When we measure anger, we’re trying to understand and evaluate how someone reacts or thinks in response to it.

How To Measure Anger

When we measure anger, it’s important that the method can tell the difference between anger and other emotions, give us a clear idea of how much anger is being felt, and ensure that the results aren’t influenced by people intentionally trying to change them.

Related: 8 Types of Anger: What is Your Anger Style?

Self-reports

The usual way to understand anger is by asking people about their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions through surveys.

Anger can be measured as a temporary feeling, ranging from slight irritation to intense fury, or as a lasting tendency to feel angry. People with a high tendency for anger are thought to experience angry feelings more frequently, intensely, and for a longer time compared to those with a low tendency for anger.

Surveys focused on anger are typically straightforward for measuring (like counting the “Yes” responses), but people can easily manipulate their answers.

Take a self-report anger survey here.

Behavioral Observations

Feeling angry usually comes with a specific facial expression, but it’s not a must. Whether someone shows anger on their face depends on the situation, social expectations, and personal differences. 

However, if anger is expressed in facial expressions, you’ll likely see lowered eyebrows and a closer positioning of them. This might be accompanied by intense eye contact, wider nostrils, tightly pressed lips, or even the showing of teeth. 

Experts use the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to analyze and understand these facial patterns (developed by Ekman and Friesen in 1978).

The key and most significant movement associated with anger is the narrowing of the eyebrows. The expression of basic emotions, like anger, is believed to be inherited and can even be seen in young children.

Trained evaluators can accurately analyze facial expressions, but this method offers only a moderate level of measuring anger. Generally, it’s possible to distinguish between mild and intense anger. Although people can manage their facial expressions, it’s challenging to convincingly manipulate them in the eyes of an experienced evaluator.

Physiological Measures Of Anger

When someone is angry, their body goes into overdrive, leading to feelings of being hyperactive, restless, tense, and powerful. This occurs because the nervous system revs up the part responsible for this response, while another part steps back.

We can measure this physical response by checking things like blood pressure, heart rate, or skin conductance. However, these physical responses are often general, and it’s challenging to tell exactly what emotion is causing them. But when people say they’re angry, we often see increases in blood pressure, especially the bottom number, and total peripheral resistance. Additionally, there’s usually a rise in heart rate, more skin conductance responses, and increased muscle activity.

When scientists use brain scans like MRI and PET to look at the brain during angry moments, they find that a part called the orbitofrontal cortex is active. Researchers found that during anger, the left side of the brain tends to be more active when measuring brain waves (EEG).

While these methods provide very precise measurements, they can’t specifically tell us if someone is angry. The same bodily responses can happen in other emotional states. Despite studies showing that people can learn to control these physiological states through training, doing so spontaneously is extremely difficult.

Conclusion

When we talk about anger, we can look at it in three ways: how a person feels inside, what they show on the outside, and what’s happening in their body. To measure anger, we have surveys for personal feelings, codes for facial expressions, and tests that check body reactions. But because each of these methods has its own pros and cons, it’s a good idea to use at least two of them to get a better understanding of someone’s anger.

Reference: Bongard, S. (2013). Anger, Measurement. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_227