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Evolutionary role of anger.

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Why do we still have anger? It seems pretty destructive, and a hindrance, so what purpose does it serve? It seems to me that if it were totally useless, whatever genes responsible for it would have died out, especially given how much injury it causes, both to the self and others. So why do we have it still? What's the point of it?
 

ygolo

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My opinion is that anger is most useful when protecting someone or something you love. [MENTION=8584]SpankyMcFly[/MENTION] may have a story he wants to relate here. Although, I think in his case it was more instinctual than emotional, I feel like it comes from the same place.

I do agree that in a modern, highly connected world, where real threats are more accidental and structural in nature rather than intentional things coming from individuals (though there are still plenty of cases). The impulses of anger can be misplaced.

The times I have felt anger to be most useful is when I have had to defend my friends, or myself. It has been a long time since I have needed to use it in physical confrontation.

One other use, I think, is as a marker for ourselves. I believe, the things we get angry at are things we feel threaten what is important to us.

I have recently had a string of times when I have gotten angry in ways that surprised myself. Although, the results of me not controlling my temper were not good, I did find out a little bit more about what I valued and wanted to protect.

Edit: I definitely seem to get consistently irate when I perceive people are being picked on. My perceptions can be wrong, and I have a bit of a hair trigger on this. But it comes from someplace that is deeply ingrained in my experiences.
 

magpie

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I don't know what the purpose of anger is from an evolutionary perspective and I don't much care. But in the modern world I think the point of anger lies in its expression, like any emotion. Anger doesn't have to be destructive. The appropriate expression of emotions is cathartic and necessary. Not feeling anger would be unnatural and a death.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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One other use, I think, is as a marker for ourselves. I believe, the things we get angry at are things we feel threaten what is important to us.

This is one thing I've arrived at. And that can't be bad, can it?
 

ygolo

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This is one thing I've arrived at. And that can't be bad, can it?

I think knowing what is important to us is beyond good and bad. It is the framework on which we judge good vs. bad.
 

Honor

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This is one thing I've arrived at. And that can't be bad, can it?

I think knowing what is important to us is beyond good and bad. It is the framework on which we judge good vs. bad.

The question, though, is whether discerning what is a threat to us is evolutionary advantageous enough to preserve anger. Obviously, when someone steals something from your anger, you experience anger, and that's evolutionarily advantageous because locking down one's house or finding/harming the thief will prevent repeated instances of it. But what about experiencing anger at other things like social slights or when the train doesn't arrive on time?
 

Magic Poriferan

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How recently do you think it became useless? If it only became useless with civilization, then perhaps it remains vestigially even though it is useless.
Let's compare this to the narrower topic of revenge, which I think is more obviously useless than anger in general. There is a compelling case that back when people were confined to stone aged of no more than 50 people and very rarely that, the threat of revenge was actually a functional deterrent that helped to maintain some social order. In the world today, revenge just isn't useful, but our current situation has arrived so fast that we have no fundamentally changed and the drive is still there.

But I also question whether anger is useless or not. It is a motivator, and can certainly still be angry for a good cause, and it is a signal to other people which may still get people to react accordingly. That's about all you can hope for from an emotion. If that isn't useful, then I think we'd have ask if any of the emotions are useful and why we have not become robots that simply execute rational ethics.
 

magpie

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But I also question whether anger is useless or not. It is a motivator, and can certainly still be angry for a good cause, and it is a signal to other people which may still get people to react accordingly. That's about all you can hope for from an emotion. If that isn't useful, then I think we'd have ask if any of the emotions are useful and why we have not become robots that simply execute rational ethics.

That's because it's not useless. Obviously we experience it and therefore we must experience it. Feelings aren't traits, either. A species wouldn't evolve out of a feeling. I really don't think it works that way, genetically.
 

ygolo

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The question, though, is whether discerning what is a threat to us is evolutionary advantageous enough to preserve anger. Obviously, when someone steals something from your anger, you experience anger, and that's evolutionarily advantageous because locking down one's house or finding/harming the thief will prevent repeated instances of it. But what about experiencing anger at other things like social slights or when the train doesn't arrive on time?

Well, in the cases you mentioned, I think it means the person getting angry valued whatever was perceived to be slighted, or whatever was perceived to be lost waiting for the train.

However, perceiving something doesn't mean it's real. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. Also, feeling angry doesn't necessarily mean yelling and shouting, or even fuming, but could lead instead to doing things that lead to consequences we want.
 

Honor

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Well, in the cases you mentioned, I think it means the person getting angry valued whatever was perceived to be slighted, or whatever was perceived to be lost waiting for the train.

However, perceiving something doesn't mean it's real. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. Also, feeling angry doesn't necessarily mean yelling and shouting, or even fuming, but could lead instead to doing things that lead to consequences we want.
My question was whether or not it leads to us changing our actions in ways that are evolutionarily consequential in those cases.
 

Tellenbach

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Anger is a great motivator (think the Kill Bill movies); it moves us to action and encourages innovative problem-solving. Just today, there is a story of a woman who got ripped off and lost $900 trying to buy a puppy for her sick daughter. One community members got angry and bought the lady a puppy.
 

Mole

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In the modern world anger is disfunctional. So in order to harm us our enemies try to make us angry.

As I write the Islamic State is trying to make us angry by cutting the head off an American journalist. They hope we will become so angry we will send our soldiers into the Islamic State to kill Muslims.

This reinforces their narrative that we are oppressing Muslims. And so recruits Muslims across the world to fight for the Islamic State.

Fortunately we are literate individuals able to disengage from our emotions and evaluate the situation dispassionately.
 

ygolo

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My question was whether or not it leads to us changing our actions in ways that are evolutionarily consequential in those cases.

If we are successful in the actions chosen, I think so. At the least, better health. If unsuccessful or poorly adapted, perhaps negatively. It's not the anger itself, but how we act on it that has consequences.
 

indra

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We must be notified of being wronged, how we must be notified of experiencing harm - pain. Though, a simple flag is not enough - being cognizant of a fact is not enough. A creature would easily forgo their future-state in favor of the gratification awarded here and now through simple ignorance, the way raccoons won't let go of coins despite their balled fist being the reason they can't pull their hand out of the hole it fit through just moments before. There must be a driving force that ensures culpability beyond the mere act of realization - whence, the emotions are born.
 

magpie

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We must be notified of being wronged, how we must be notified of experiencing harm - pain. Though, a simple flag is not enough - being cognizant of a fact is not enough. A creature would easily forgo their future-state in favor of the gratification awarded here and now through simple ignorance, the way raccoons won't let go of coins despite their balled fist being the reason they can't pull their hand out of the hole it fit through just moments before. There must be a driving force that ensures culpability beyond the mere act of realization - whence, the emotions are born.

Yes, but the instinctual reaction to harm isn't anger, it's fear.
 

indra

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Yes, but the instinctual reaction to harm isn't anger, it's fear.

Yagyu Munenori cautions - when struck with a blade, it is most typical for an assailant to fly into a rage striking wildly in return. Hitting is easy, he says, being hit without being hit back is the challenge.

There are likely a bevy of reactions for a multitude of contexts.
 

prplchknz

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if anger didn't exist we'd probably still have a serf society if not worse
 

Mole

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I think that tribes are engaged with the emotions of the tribe in real time; and that literate individuals are detached from their emotions. And that members of an electronic tribe like typology central are becoming re-engaged with the emotions of the etribe in real time.

So the history of emotions may be written in terms of spoken culture, literate culture, and electronic culture.
 

magpie

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Yagyu Munenori cautions - when struck with a blade, it is most typical for an assailant to fly into a rage striking wildly in return. Hitting is easy, he says, being hit without being hit back is the challenge.

There are likely a bevy of reactions for a multitude of contexts.

Yes, that's true. It's complex. I think it might be pedantic for me to argue that rage, in your example, might be a subset of fear. So I won't. Because it's a chemical response meant for survival. That's the evolutionary part. And the name of that response is just semantics.
 
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