I USED to think public displays of anger were largely a New England thing, fueled by endless winters and losing baseball teams — exemplified by the guy in the car behind you, fuming in your rear view mirror because he didn’t get to the red light first.
But over the last few years, this nation has begun to act like a bunch of Boston drivers. Newspaper websites are overrun with angry, anonymous commenters, who blast every story of tragedy or triumph with venom and personal attacks. The New York Times reports that most members of Congress have abandoned town hall meetings this summer, in order to avoid the seething Tea Party-ites who heckled them at last year’s health care forums. (I hope Barney Frank still holds a few. I’d love to see him compare another voter to a dining room table.)
Sometimes the only person who doesn’t seem angry is President Obama, who has treated the
Granted, there’s plenty to be mad about in a time of recession and war and ecological disaster. But these days, public anger feels different and diffuse, something that can’t be sated with a single righted wrong, since there will always be another red light ahead. I’ve taken to wondering if bitterness is a natural human state — if a cache of anger always rested below the surface, like an oil deposit, and the Internet has finally allowed it gush forth.
Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, argues that the Internet has actually made us angrier. Some of the reasons are obvious: the anonymity of the medium, its solitary nature takes away the social cues that tend to keep us measured. Some reasons are less intuitive: the more we rage, Markman says, the angrier we get.
We tend to believe in the myth of catharsis, the notion that expressing our anger will settle us down. Markman cites a 1999 study that suggests otherwise, conducted by psychologists at Iowa State and Case Western Reserve Universities. Subjects were told to write an essay, then were given a scathing critique. Some had the chance to vent their frustration by hitting a punching bag. Others did nothing. When they played a computer game afterward, the punching-bag-hitters were much more aggressive than their breathe-deep-and-count-to-ten peers.
And when you’re angry in the virtual presence of like-minded people, taking part in a closed-loop community of rage, you work yourself up even more, Markman says. Talking to someone with opposing views isn’t as easy as watching Fox News or MSNBC, he says, but it tempers your language and soothes your brain.
That Obama has managed to stay calm is partly a function of his position; he’s not a talking head with books to sell, but a chief executive who has to hear all sides. And from a governing standpoint, his approach is sound; I don’t make my best decisions when I’m seething, nor do Boston drivers.
But Markman understands why the president’s demeanor has caused so much frustration: “We gauge what matters to people by what makes them angry.’’ Most of us have issues that set us off, lines we won’t cross. If Wall Street didn’t stir Obama, if BP leaves him cold, if he doesn’t sound off on the congressman who apologized to the spillers at last week’s hearings — people will start wondering what he cares about at all.
Anger won’t plug the leak or fix the ecosystem, but it might give us some measure of actual catharsis: a resounding “no more’’ from someone with authority to act, who hears all sides, counts to ten, and winds up angry still. The rest of us can only seethe from the passenger seat, but Obama holds the wheel.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
