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Each day we face personal trials that trigger difficult-to-manage emotions affecting our communication, our relationships, and the quality of our lives. For example, romantic jealousy—which we discuss in Chapter 10—is toxic to interpersonal communication and must be managed effectively for relationships to survive (Guerrero & Andersen, 1998). Likewise, fear—of emotional investment, vulnerability, or long-term commitment—can prevent us from forming intimate connections with others (Mickelson, Kessler, & Shaver, 1997). In the remainder of this chapter, we focus on four such challenges that occur all too frequently in our daily lives: anger, lack of empathy online, passion, and grief.

ANGER

Anger is a negative primary emotion that occurs when you are blocked or interrupted from attaining an important goal by what you see as the improper action of an external agent (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). As this definition suggests, anger is almost always triggered by someone or something external to us and is driven by our perception that the interruption is unfair (Scherer, 2001). So, for example, when your sister refuses to give you a much-needed loan, you’re more likely to feel angry if you think she can afford to give you the loan but is simply choosing not to. By contrast, if you think your sister is willing but unable to help you, you’ll be less likely to feel anger toward her.

Each of us experiences anger frequently; the average person is mildly to moderately angry anywhere from several times a day to several times a week (Berkowitz & Harmon-Jones, 2004). Perhaps because of its familiarity, we commonly underestimate anger’s destructive potential. Anger causes perceptual errors that enhance the likelihood we will respond in a verbally and physically violent fashion toward others (Lemerise & Dodge, 1993). For instance, both men and women report the desire to punch, smash, kick, bite, or do similar actions that will hurt others when they are angry (Carlson & Hatfield, 1992). The impact of anger on interpersonal communication is also devastating. Angry people are more likely to argue, make accusations, yell, swear, and make hurtful and abusive remarks (Knobloch, 2005). Additionally, passive-aggressive communication such as ignoring others, pulling away, giving people dirty looks, and using the “silent treatment” are all more likely to happen when you’re angry (Knobloch, 2005).

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The most frequently used strategy for managing anger is suppression. You bottle it up inside rather than let it out. Occasional suppression can be constructive, such as when open communication of anger would be unprofessional, or when anger has been triggered by mistaken perceptions or attributions. But always suppressing anger can cause physical and mental problems: you put yourself in a near-constant state of arousal and negative thinking known as chronic hostility. People suffering from chronic hostility spend most of their waking hours simmering in a thinly veiled state of suppressed rage. Their thoughts and perceptions are dominated by the negative. They are more likely than others to believe that human nature is innately evil and that most people are immoral, selfish, exploitative, and manipulative. Ironically, because chronically hostile people believe the worst about others, they tend to be difficult, self-involved, demanding, and ungenerous (Tavris, 1989).

A second common anger management strategy is venting, which many people view as helpful and healthy; it “gets the anger out.” The assumption that venting will rid you of anger is rooted in the concept of catharsis, which holds that openly expressing your emotions enables you to purge them. But in contrast to popular beliefs about the benefits of venting, research suggests that while venting may provide a temporary sense of pleasure, it actually boosts anger. One field study of engineers and technicians who were fired from their jobs found that the more individuals vented their anger about the company, the angrier they became (Ebbeson, Duncan, & Konecni, 1975).

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To manage your anger, it’s better to use strategies such as encounter avoidance, encounter structuring, and reappraisal. In cases in which something or someone has already triggered anger within you, consider using the Jefferson strategy, named after the third president of the United States. When a person says or does something that makes you angry, count slowly to 10 before you speak or act (Tavris, 1989). If you are very angry, count slowly to 100; then speak or act. Thomas Jefferson adopted this simple strategy for reducing his own anger during interpersonal encounters.

Although the Jefferson strategy may seem silly, it’s effective because it creates a delay between the event that triggered your anger, the accompanying arousal and awareness, and your communication response. The delay between your internal physical and mental reactions and your outward communication allows your arousal to diminish somewhat, including lowering your adrenaline, blood pressure, and heart rate. Therefore, you communicate in a less extreme (and possibly less inappropriate) way than if you had not “counted to 10.” A delay also gives you time for critical self-reflection, perception-checking, and empathy. These three skills can help you identify errors in your assessment of the event or person and plan a competent response. The Jefferson strategy is especially easy to use when you’re communicating by e-mail or text message, two media that naturally allow for a delay between receiving a message and responding.

ONLINE COMMUNICATION AND EMPATHY DEFICITS

After giving a lecture about stereotypes, I received an e-mail from a student: “Stereotypes are DEMEANING!! People should DENOUNCE them, not TEACH them!!! WHY LECTURE ABOUT STEREOTYPES???” Noting the lack of greeting, capped letters, and excessive punctuation, I interpreted the message as angry. Irritated, I popped back a flippant response, “Uhhhh . . . because people often wrongly believe that stereotypes are true?” Hours later, I received a caustic reply: “I think it’s really disrespectful of you to treat my question so rudely!! I’M PAYING YOU TO TEACH, NOT MOCK!!!”

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You have probably had similar experiences—online encounters in which anger or other emotions were expressed inappropriately, triggering a destructive exchange. In most of these interactions, the messages traded back and forth would never have been expressed face-to-face.

Why are we more likely to inappropriately express our emotions online? Two features of online interaction—asynchronicity and invisibility—help explain this phenomenon (Suler, 2004). Much of our online communication is asynchronous. That is, we don’t interact with others in real time but instead exchange messages (such as tweets, texts, e-mails, or Facebook postings) that are read and responded to at later points. When communicating asynchronously, it’s almost as if time is magically suspended (Suler, 2004). We know that there will likely be responses to our messages, but we choose when (and if) we view those responses. This predisposes us to openly express emotions that we might otherwise conceal if we knew the response would be immediate.

Online communication also provides us with a sense of invisibility. Without sharing a physical context with the people with whom we’re communicating, we feel as if we’re not really there—that people can’t really see or hear us. Consequently, we feel distant from the consequences of our messages.

Recent brain research suggests that our sense of invisibility when communicating online may have a neurological basis. Recall from Chapter 1 that feedback consists of the verbal and nonverbal messages recipients convey to indicate their reaction to communication. Now remember our definition of empathy from Chapter 3: the ability to experience others’ thoughts and emotions. Research documents that the same part of the brain that controls empathy—the orbitofrontal cortex—also monitors feedback (Goleman, 2006). This means that our ability to experience empathy is neurologically tied to our ability to perceive feedback (Beer, John, Scabini, & Knight, 2006). During face-to-face and phone encounters, we constantly track the feedback of others, watching their facial expressions, eye contact, and gestures, and listening to their tone of voice. This enables us to feel empathy for them, to consider what they’re thinking and feeling about our communication. When we see or hear people react negatively to something we’re saying, we can instantly modify our messages in ways that avoid negative consequences.

Now consider what happens when we lack feedback—such as when we’re communicating online. Without the ability to perceive others’ immediate responses to our communication, it’s difficult for us to experience empathy and to adjust our communication in ways that maintain appropriateness (Goleman, 2007a). We’re less able to perspective-take (see the situation and our communication from our partner’s point of view) and to feel empathic concern (experience his or her emotions and feelings). Consequently, we’re more likely to express negative emotions—especially anger—in blunt, tactless, and inappropriate ways. We may shout at others by using capped letters and exclamation points, or we may say things we’d never say over the phone or face-to-face. Complicating matters further, people on the receiving end of our communication have the same deficit. Their online messages are less sensitive, less tactful, and maybe even more offensive than their offline messages. Without feedback, we have difficulty experiencing empathy and gauging the appropriateness of our emotional expression.

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What can you do to experience and express emotions more competently online? First, compensate for the online empathy deficit by investing intense effort into perspective-taking and empathic concern.

Second, communicate these aspects of empathy directly to your online partners, following suggestions from Chapter 3. Integrate into your online messages questions that seek the other person’s perspectives, such as “What’s your view on this situation?” Validate their views when they provide them: “You make a lot of sense.” Communicate empathic concern by saying things like “I hope you’re doing OK.” If you receive what looks like an angry message, convey that you recognize the other person is angry and that you feel bad about it: “I feel really terrible that you’re so upset.”

Third, expect and be tolerant of any aggressive messages you receive, accepting that such behavior is a natural outcome of the online environment rather than evidence that other people are mean or rude. Finally, avoid crafting and sending angry online messages in the heat of the moment. You might craft a response, wait 24 hours to cool off, revisit it, assess it in terms of empathy, and then modify or even delete it if it’s inappropriate.