You wouldn't like me when I'm angry
Iris Mauss wants to see you get angry. Mauss is the lead researcher at the Emotion Regulation Lab at the University of Denver. Mauss et al (2006) (including Evers) tested automatic, implicit emotional control against deliberate emotional control in 42 female college students. They found that deliberate emotional control actually made anger expression and self-report worse, while automatic, implicit control lessened all anger measures. However, it is not clear that the level of anger aroused was equivalent in both groups. It may be that people who experience less anger in general are more likely to have positive implicit beliefs about emotional control. In a more recent refinement of the experiment, Mauss et al (2007) again used women only: "because anger-related emotion regulatory goals appear to apply with particular force to women (anger expression is seen as more inappropriate for women than for men... and to eliminate variance due to gender differences." Again, Mauss found that implicit, unconscious regulation of emotion was less "costly" than conscious control. More interestingly, Mauss found that she could prime subjects for implicit control by having them do word jumbles for stimuli like "restrains" and "stable."
My first reaction when looking at Mauss' webpage was that she doesn't like working with men as subjects or as colleagues. The only men in her lab are undergraduate researchers. Now, that's not the only unfair statement I've made this week, *shame* but it's probably the worst. Many of her listed collaborators are men, by the way. I was surprised that it seems almost impossible to find comparable research on men's emotional control. Mauss cites Timmers et al (1998) for the idea that men are less motivated to control their anger, because anger "reflects their power." My personal experience that anger is a reflection of my powerlessness would probably be attributed to my upbringing as female.
My first reaction when looking at Mauss' webpage was that she doesn't like working with men as subjects or as colleagues. The only men in her lab are undergraduate researchers. Now, that's not the only unfair statement I've made this week, *shame* but it's probably the worst. Many of her listed collaborators are men, by the way. I was surprised that it seems almost impossible to find comparable research on men's emotional control. Mauss cites Timmers et al (1998) for the idea that men are less motivated to control their anger, because anger "reflects their power." My personal experience that anger is a reflection of my powerlessness would probably be attributed to my upbringing as female.