Analyzing anger: how to make people mad
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Updated: Aug 23, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Gerald L Clore1, David B Centerbar
1Department of Psychology, University of Virgina, Charlottesville 22904-4400, USA. gclore@virginia.edu
Abstract:
Does simple displeasure cause anger without appraisals or agency attributions? The authors offer 8 observations: (a) Appraisal theory also predicts that displeasure promotes anger, (b) An emotion of frustration can be usefully distinguished from anger, (c) Aggressive reactions to norm violations among animals suggest that they too distinguish bad behavior from bad outcomes, (d) Attributions to agency are perceptual and automatic in social situations, (e) It is tenuous to argue that agency attributions are enacted in angry aggression, but absent in anger elicitation. (f) The contextualized meanings of expressive movements, rather than movements themselves, elicit emotion, (g) Expressions may be better seen as constituents than as causes of emotions, (h) Cognitive components of emotion generally come before, not after, eliciting events.
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