title: What does it mean to be angry at yourself? Categories, appraisals, and the problem of language.
abstract: According to appraisal theorists, anger involves a negative event, usually blocking a goal, caused by another person. Critics argue that other-agency is unnecessary, since people can be angry at themselves, and thus that appraisal theory is wrong about anger. In two studies, we compared anger, self-anger, shame, and guilt, and found that self-anger shared some appraisals, action tendencies, and associated emotions with anger, others with shame and guilt. Self-anger was not simply anger with a different agency appraisal. Anger, shame, and guilt almost always involved other people, but almost half of the occurrences of self-anger were solitary. We discuss the incompatibility of appraisal theories with any strict categorical view of emotions, and the inadequacy of emotion words to capture emotional experience.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA. pce@umich.edu
authors.forename: Phoebe C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Ellsworth
authors.forename: Eddie M W
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Tong
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005260:Female; D006167:Guilt; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012660:Semantics; D012752:Shame; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires