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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 12, 2025

Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal

Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal

Published on: April 18, 2017

Anger has benefits for attaining goals.

Heather C Lench¹, Noah T Reed¹, Tiffany George¹

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

|October 30, 2023

Summary

Experiencing anger can help people achieve goals when facing challenges. This research shows anger facilitates goal attainment across various difficult tasks, from puzzles to voting.

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Area of Science:

Psychology
Social Psychology
Emotion Research

Background:

Functional accounts of emotion posit that emotions serve adaptive purposes.
Emotions are widely assumed to improve outcomes for individuals.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the hypothesis that anger enhances goal attainment, particularly when facing challenges.
To examine the behavioral consequences of anger across diverse goal-oriented situations.

Main Methods:

Seven studies were conducted assessing goal attainment in scenarios with varying levels of difficulty.
Participants' goal achievement was measured in response to anger induction compared to a neutral control condition.

Main Results:

Anger consistently facilitated greater goal attainment on challenging tasks compared to neutral conditions.
Specific findings include improved puzzle-solving, increased cheating for prizes, higher video game scores, faster reaction times, greater voting effort, and increased protective financial action.

Conclusions:

Anger appears to be a functional emotion that enhances performance and action-taking when individuals confront obstacles to their goals.
The findings support a functional perspective of anger, highlighting its role in overcoming challenges.