Psychology and Pedagogy of AngerRichardson, Roy Franklin
Science
Psychology and Pedagogy of Anger
Richardson, Roy Franklin
Anger
He will work for days preparing some subject in which he has
had opposition that excited his resentment in order to even up with
the offender, and takes extreme delight in making his point. His
tendency to anger is greater when feeling well pleased with himself.
The residuum of his emotion involves attitudes of determination and
idealization which plays an important role in his ambition in general.
The description above will suffice to show the problem in individual
differences in emotional life. With some subjects fear is the ruling
passion. Subjects A. and B. have almost an even proportion of fear and
anger during the period of observation. However these instances
represent adult persons. How far the habitual emotional reactions are
determined by training and instruction, is an important question. It is
highly probable that the character of training in childhood and early
adolescence plays a leading part. Subject C. above was an only child and
took considerable license, almost getting beyond the control of his
parents at an early age. J. reports that at early adolescence, anger was
much more frequent and intense than at present. He believes that an
early philosophical notion that intelligence should dominate the
emotions, had an influence in establishing his present emotional habits.
G. was early taught that it was sinful to get angry, an idea which he
accepted at the time. His anger rarely refers to persons but vents on
objects, principles and situations involved. He has relatively few
emotions of anger. He believes that his early religious training was of
importance in moulding the habitual reactions which he now assumes when
angry. Such material as we have makes it entirely probable that a large
part of the habitual mental reactions assumed in anger is the result of
training. It may be said further that when instruction involves affairs
of emotional life, individual difference become a still more pressing
problem than when intelligence is the criterion.
Other inferences of the role of anger in the act of instruction are
suggested from the present study. If the teacher himself does not
possess the ability of well defined resentment against an infringement
of fairness, advantage of this defect may be taken by the alert pupil
unless there is compensation for it in another direction as by the
principle of co-operation, by love or pride appealed to. Cooley however
puts the matter a little too strongly when he says, “No teacher can
maintain discipline unless his scholars feel that in some manner he will
resent a breach of it.” (Human Nature and the Social Order (4), Page
244.) The method of school control itself refers to some extent to the
individual emotional life of the teacher, as well as pupil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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