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I wrote a comment in response to Anger makes the world seem more threatening on PsychologyToday.com:

Anger? What About Rage?

One thing I notice about most popular articles on anger is that they fail to differentiate between anger and rage and often classify anger as an entirely negative emotion.

Anger is necessary and healthy–it’s part of our social immune system as it enables us to detect bad people in our lives. Rage, however, occurs when anger is not allowed its natural expression, which may be fight or flight. The purpose of anger is to alert us to danger and allow us to escape. How can this possibly be a bad thing?

Too often, rage is inflicted on children by their parents, teachers, and peers. These children then grow up unable to consciously differentiate from present threats in order to survive… and I feel that this is tremendously widespread and not relegated to a few isolated incidents.

I don’t necessarily doubt the results of this study, but I wonder if they controlled for people who have received therapy for traumatic childhoods or have gone through anger management training to see how their response differs–if at all–from your average Joe. I think that would be a much more enlightening approach.