Does letting it out make anger smaller?
· Source: Bushman, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2002
A colleague presented your idea in the meeting as if it were his own, and the room nodded along. You said nothing at the time. Now you’re home, still in your coat, pacing between the kitchen and the window, replaying his face and the exact words you should have used.
A friend on the phone has a quick answer: “You need to get it out. Go for a run, punch a pillow, scream into it if you have to.” It sounds healthy. Anger feels like pressure, and pressure seems to need a way out. The question is whether that’s how anger actually works.
The idea of letting off steam
The belief has a long history. In his 2002 paper, Brad Bushman traces it back to Freud and to what is called catharsis theory: anger builds up inside like pressure in a closed space, and releasing it, even on a pillow or a punching bag, is supposed to let it drain away.
He also lists how far the idea has spread. A psychiatrist in a film recommends hitting a pillow. A model tells a magazine that boxing gets rid of her pent-up anger. Somewhere in Missouri, a billboard tells people to hit a pillow or a wall, but not their kids. The advice is everywhere.
So Bushman tested the most popular version of it directly: an angry person, a punching bag, and the person they’re angry with firmly in mind.
How the experiment worked
The study had 600 university students, half men and half women, each told the research was about first impressions. They wrote a short essay giving their own view on abortion and passed it to another student for comments. What came back was harsh: every rating near the bottom of the scale, and a handwritten note calling it one of the worst essays the reader had read. In fact, there was no other student. Every participant received the same insulting feedback, and earlier studies had shown it makes people quite angry.
Then the students were split into three groups of 200. The first group hit a heavy punching bag for as long and as hard as they liked, while looking at a photo of the student who had supposedly written the comments and thinking about that person.
The second group hit the same bag, but while thinking about getting physically fit, with a photo of someone exercising on the screen. A third group didn’t hit anything at all. They sat quietly for two minutes while the experimenter claimed to be fixing a computer. Nobody tried to calm them down.
Afterwards, everyone filled in a form about how angry they felt and also played a reaction-time game against the “other student”, where the winner of each round could blast the loser with noise through headphones, choosing how loud and how long.
What actually happened
The students who hit the bag while thinking about the person who insulted them felt the angriest of all three groups. They were also the most aggressive in the noise game. The group that sat quietly was the least angry and the least aggressive. Hitting the bag didn’t put anyone in a better mood either.
The fitness group landed in between. They felt less angry than the group that had pictured the insulting student, about as calm as the quiet group. In the noise game they were somewhat more aggressive than the quiet group and somewhat less than the first group, though neither difference was large enough to be certain.
One detail is easy to miss. The fitness group actually hit the bag more often, on average 127.5 times against 112.2. So the extra anger didn’t come from more punching. It went with what people were thinking about while they punched.
Thinking about the person while you hit the bag kept the anger going. Sitting still did better.
Going over it keeps anger warm
That points to the real ingredient, which is dwelling on the person and the insult. A few years earlier, Rusting and Nolen-Hoeksema looked at this directly in a series of experiments. When angry people were asked to focus on their feelings and on themselves, their anger went up. If they were steered toward something else instead, it went down or stayed the same.
That matches the evening in the coat. Pacing and replaying the meeting is a mental version of the punching bag with the photo on it. It feels like getting rid of the anger, and it mostly keeps the anger topped up.
What does calm anger down
If letting it out isn’t the answer, what is? In 2024, Kjærvik and Bushman brought together 154 studies on activities people use to manage anger. They sorted them into two kinds: activities that raise your body’s arousal, such as hitting a bag, jogging or cycling, and activities that lower it, such as deep breathing, mindfulness and meditation.
The calming activities reduced both anger and aggression, and this held across ages, genders, settings and ways of teaching them. Activities that raised arousal didn’t work overall. In the authors’ own plain terms, their findings don’t support venting or going for a run as ways to manage anger. A run can still be good for you. It just isn’t, on this evidence, an anger tool.
Naming it, then waiting
Putting these studies together suggests a quieter approach, and the steps here are our advice rather than a tested routine. First, say what you feel in one or two words: “furious”, “humiliated”, “hurt”. That’s very different from rehearsing the whole story with the colleague as the villain.
Then do something that slows you down for a few minutes. A few slow breaths at the window is enough to start. You’re not trying to talk yourself out of being angry. The aim is to give your body time to come down before you decide anything.
Only after that, look at what you want to happen next. Maybe a short, calm message to the colleague tomorrow, or a word with your manager about who gets credit for what. Anger often has a point. It’s just easier to make that point well once it isn’t running the show.
An evening on the window seat
Here’s a made-up example. Dan is the one pacing in his coat. Instead of calling a friend to go through the meeting again, he sits on the window seat and says it in a few words: “I’m angry. Tom took credit for my plan in front of everyone.” He leaves out the speech he wished he’d made.
He takes his coat off, breathes slowly for a minute and watches the street. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it drops from shouting level to something he can think next to. Then he decides on one step: a two-line email to his manager in the morning, saying he’d like to talk through who owns the project. After that he makes dinner.
When anger needs more help
Everyone gets angry, and anger at real unfairness is normal. It’s worth getting help when anger comes often and hard, when it leads to shouting, breaking things or frightening the people around you, or when it’s costing you friendships or work. If you ever worry that you might hurt someone, get help straight away.
A doctor or a psychologist can point you to approaches that work for anger. The 2024 review found calming techniques helped in many different groups and settings, including when therapists delivered them. Notes about what set your anger off and how fast it settled can make that first conversation easier.
Try it tonight
- When anger comes tonight, say what you feel in one or two words, without the whole story.
- Take a few slow breaths and give it a few minutes before you do anything else.
- Then name one calm step for tomorrow, or decide there’s nothing to do.
Say the word out loud in Halflight, and then the one step. It writes both under today’s date, so next week you can see how quickly the anger settled.