Venting makes you MORE angry?

Have you ever had a friend/girlfriend/homeless person ask you if they could just "vent" for a minute about something that bothered them? Have you ever heard someone say they're going to the gym to hit a punching bag for a while to get out some frustration?

We commonly call these behaviors "venting." The idea behind venting is that by expressing anger at some other target, we discharge whatever anger is there and are free to go about our day, collecting butterflies and petting toy poodles at Starbuck or whatever it is we do when we're not on the verge of killing someone. This idea comes courtesy of Freud and his ideas about catharsis. Catharsis is the theoretical release you feel as dispelling a feeling that returns your body to homeostatis.

That's a cute theory, but does it seem realistic? When it comes to anger, we can confidently say NO. It turns out that expressing your anger actually makes you more prone to be aggressive after your supposed "catharsis." It makes sense, too: when you practice being angry and aggressive, you're more prone to use aggression later on, just as having a lot of sex will make you more lusty, or partying a lot will make you more likely to party more (lest you get a disease or a hangover, or both).

The next time someone says I'm going to [have sex/get drunk/party hard/beat up an old person] to get it out of their system, you can look at them skeptically and say something incredibly clever like...

...

oh really?