PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Bushman / VENTING ANGER FEEDS THE FLAME Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame? Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction, Anger, and Aggressive Responding Brad J. Bushman Iowa State University Does distraction or rumination work better to diffuse anger? Catharsis theory predicts that rumination works best, but empir- ical evidence is lacking. In this study, angered participants hit a punching bag and thought about the person who had angered them (rumination group) or thought about becoming physically fit (distraction group). After hitting the punching bag, they reported how angry they felt. Next, they were given the chance to administer loud blasts of noise to the person who had angered them. There also was a no punching bag control group. People in the rumination group felt angrier than did people in the distrac- tion or control groups. People in the rumination group were also most aggressive, followed respectively by people in the distraction and control groups. Rumination increased rather than decreased anger and aggression. Doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger. These results directly contradict catharsis theory. The belief in the value of venting anger has become widespread in our culture. In movies, magazine articles, and even on billboards, people are encouraged to vent their anger and “blow off steam.” For example, in the movie Analyze This, a psychiatrist (played by Billy Crystal) tells his New York gangster client (played by Robert De Niro), “You know what I do when I’m angry? I hit a pil- low. Try that.” The client promptly pulls out his gun, points it at the couch, and fires several bullets into the pillow. “Feel better?” asks the psychiatrist. “Yeah, I do,” says the gunman. In a Vogue magazine article, female model Shalom concludes that boxing helps her release pent-up anger. She said, I found myself looking forward to the chance to pound out the frustrations of the week against Carlos’s (her trainer) mitts. Let’s face it: A personal boxing trainer has advantages over a husband or lover. He won’t look at you accusingly and say, “I don’t know where this irritation is coming from.” . . . Your boxing trainer knows it’s in there. And he wants you to give it to him. (“Fighting Fit,” 1993, p. 179) In a New York Times Magazine article about hate crimes, Andrew Sullivan writes, “Some expression of prejudice serves a useful purpose. It lets off steam; it allows natural tensions to express themselves incrementally; it can siphon off conflict through words, rather than actions” (Sullivan, 1999, p. 113). A large billboard in Missouri states, “Hit a Pillow, Hit a Wall, But Don’t Hit Your Kids!” Catharsis Theory The theory of catharsis is one popular and authorita- tive statement that venting one’s anger will produce a positive improvement in one’s psychological state. The word catharsis comes from the Greek word katharsis, which literally translated means a cleansing or purging. According to catharsis theory, acting aggressively or even viewing aggression is an effective way to purge angry and aggressive feelings. Sigmund Freud believed that repressed negative emo- tions could build up inside an individual and cause psy- chological symptoms, such as hysteria (nervous out- bursts). Breuer and Freud (1893-1895/1955) proposed that the treatment of hysteria required the discharge of the emotional state previously associated with trauma. They claimed that for interpersonal traumas, such as Author’s Note: I would like to thank Remy Reinier for her help scan- ning photo IDs of students and photographs from health magazines. I also would like to thank Angelica Bonacci for her helpful comments on an early draft of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brad J. Bushman, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3180; e-mail: bushman@ iastate.edu. PSPB, Vol. 28 No. 6, June 2002 724-731 © 2002 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. 724