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How a Supposedly Negative Emotion Can Enhance Learning
Ryan C. Martin
There are times when teaching, despite how rewarding it can be, is an extraordinarily
frustrating experience. It can be time-consuming and difficult
to do well, and even the best students do not always appreciate the hard
work teachers put into their assignments and activities. Teachers are sometimes
swamped with resource limitations that make it difficult to achieve
their learning outcomes, and even on their best days, they do not reach all
the students they hope to reach. Plus, despite their best efforts, their innovative
and grand plans for teaching do not always work, leaving them
frustrated.
As a psychologist who researches anger, I routinely come across people
who feel that anger is a purely negative emotion. That, however,
isn’t true. In fact, anger is usually a valuable emotional experience, as it
alerts people to problems and energizes them to confront those problems
(Deffenbacher 1996). In this chapter, I will draw upon my research on anger
and my experiences as a college teacher of psychology to explore the reasons
teachers become angry, the meaning of that anger, and how teachers
can use the experience to motivate students and themselves toward better learning outcomes.

What is Anger
Anger is an emotional state associated with having one’s goals blocked, being
provoked, or insulted (Spielberger 1999). It is different from aggression,
which is a behavior with the intent to harm someone or something (Deffenbacher
1996). This distinction is important, as people often misunderstand
anger as being just the outward, aggressive expression. In reality, anger is
the emotion at the root of some aggression (e.g., hitting, yelling), but also a
host of other thoughts and behaviors (e.g., problem solving, activism, pouting,
rumination).If we think of anger more broadly than just the aggressive behaviors sometimes associated with it, it is easier to understand how teachers
can put the emotion to good use.

Why We Get Mad
To really understand how to use anger in a positive way as a teacher, one
needs to understand why people get angry in the first place. Deffenbacher
(1996) argued that anger occurs as a result of three factors: (1) a provocation,
(2) the individual’s interpretation of the provocation, and (3) the
individual’s pre-provocation psycho-biological state.
The provocation is the easiest part to understand. This is the event that
immediately preceded the anger (e.g., getting cut off in traffic, misplacing
your car keys, having students fail to follow the directions you gave them).
People often think of this as the cause of their anger. They say things like,
I’m angry because I can’t find my car keys” or it makes me so mad when
students don’t follow directions.” These provocations do not cause the anger
directly, though. If they did, everyone would become equally angry when
faced with the same provocation. But that does not happen. The things that
make me mad are not the same things that make you mad. Similarly, if the
provocation really did cause the anger directly, you would experience the
same level of anger each and every time you faced the provocation. But that
doesn’t happen either. Sometimes I get really angry when I misplace my
keys, and sometimes I get just a little angry.