研究表明：愤怒情绪可能带来成功

最近，一项发表在《个性与社会心理学杂志》上的研究结果表明，在处理棘手问题时，愤怒情绪也可能成为一种强大力。美国得克萨斯农工大学的研究发现，愤怒让人更努力实现预期目标，从而获得更大成功。

The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral.
一项实验表明，与平静的人相比，愤怒的人在一系列具有挑战性的任务中表现更好。

“These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,” said Dr Heather Lench, the first author of the study.
该研究论文的第一作者希瑟·连奇博士说：“这些发现表明，愤怒让人更努力实现预期目标，从而获得更大成功。”

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analysed survey data from more than 1,400 people, to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances.
这项研究发表在《个性与社会心理学杂志》上。得克萨斯农工大学的研究人员对1000多人进行测试，并分析了1400多人的调查数据，以探索愤怒在各种情况下对人的潜在影响。

In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams.
实验中，研究人员向参与学生展示了会引发愤怒、欲望、愉快、悲伤或不会引起情绪波动的图像。随后参与者需要解字谜。

The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states – although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.
研究结果表明，愤怒的参与者在解答高难度字谜上的表现比处于其他情绪的人更好，但在解答简单字谜上没有差异。

The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams.
研究人员表示，一种解释可能是愤怒和更持久的毅力有关，研究小组发现，那些愤怒的人花了更多的时间去解开高难度的字谜。

In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire.
在另一项实验中，愤怒的参与者比平静或悲伤的参与者更善于在滑雪电子游戏中躲避旗帜，并且与快乐或兴奋的参与者不相上下。

“This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions,” the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.
研究人员写道：“这种模式可能表明，身体进入兴奋状态可以帮助提高得分，而与悲伤和平静的情绪相比，在愤怒、快乐、渴望的情绪下身体更亢奋。”然而，在更简单的电子游戏中，并没有发现这种表现是不是少了个差异。

One experiment suggested being angry increased the degree to which participants cheated on tasks compared with the other emotions – except amusement – while another experiment found anger was associated with lower reaction times on a task.
一项实验表明，与除愉快之外的其他情绪相比，愤怒的参与者更容易作弊，而另一项实验发现，愤怒的参与者对任务反应时间更短。

In addition, responses to surveys around the 2016 and 2020 US general elections suggested people who were more angry about a hypothetical win for a presidential candidate they did not support were more likely to vote in the subsequent election.
此外，与2016年和2020年美国大选前后调查相呼应的是，那些会对自己支持的总统候选人败选感到更愤怒的选民，更有可能在随后的选举中投票。

“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable and maladaptive,” Lench said. “Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes wellbeing, and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations.”
连奇说：“人们往往更喜欢将积极情绪化作动力，并倾向于将消极情绪视为不受欢迎的不良情绪。但越来越多的证据表明，积极情绪和消极情绪共存会促进幸福感，在某些情况下，消极情绪可能发挥有效作用。”