Inductivist

I don't know how I got so lucky, but I've managed to find a small group of conservative professors to have lunch with every week--three of them are even socially conservative. What are the odds of four of those in the same room?  One fellow is retired and gets angry all the time because greedy, selfish, short-sighted businessmen are ruining the country with mass immigration. He thinks the Southwest is finished.

I worry about his health (he's 79 and has a various health problems), so I told him that this is where religion comes in (he converted to Roman Catholicism a few years back). Thinking about your country will only make you mad, but rest assured that, in the end, everything will be alright. Life is only a moment; focus on eternity.

After, I wondered if it is true that religious people are less angry than the irreligious. I regressed a GSS question on the frequency of feeling angry onto a list of demographic variables and church attendance. Here are the results (sample size = 1,181)

Standardized OLS Regression Coefficients

Age -.18*
Male -.02
Black .02
Education -.03
Income .05
Church attendance -.06*

*statistically significant effect

Older people and those who attend church frequently are significantly less angry than their counterparts. The other characteristics don't matter. (I'm surprised blacks are not angrier than whites. Anger cannot explain their higher rates of violence).

In addition to giving a person "the big picture," religion--most religions, at least--frowns on anger. My priest patiently hears my confessions of anger far too often. Angry white dude--I'm such a stereotype.   

Race and anger: GSS respondents were asked three questions about anger: 1) how many days in the past week were you angry at someone; 2) how intense was the anger, and 3) how long did the anger last? The alpha coefficient for the three measures is .53. I converted the scores on each question to z scores and summed them, creating an index.


Mean anger index (N = 1,110)

Blacks .56
Whites .02


Whites are significantly less angry than blacks at the 95% confidence level. The difference between the two means is 25% of one standard deviation.

A study of twins calculated heritabilities for the angry-hostility sub-scale of the NEO: .52 for Canadians, .52 for Germans, and .40 for Japanese (Jang et al. 2001. Covariance structure of neuroticism and agreeableness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 295-304.)

Variables: ANGRY, HOWANGRY, ANGRLAST

Are "angry white males" angry? Conservative guys like me have been labeled "angry white males," but are we? My sister-in-law suggested that liberals are the ones who are ticked off about everything.

The General Social Survey asked 1,128 whites how many days in the week they get angry about something. Here are the means by political orientation:


Mean days that the person is angry

Males
Extremely liberal 2.53
Liberal 1.58
Slightly liberal 1.42
Moderate 1.38
Slightly conservative 1.49
Conservative 1.61
Extremely conservative 2.04


Females
Extremely liberal 2.44
Liberal 1.60
Slightly liberal 1.32
Moderate 1.57
Slightly conservative 1.45
Conservative 1.21
Extremely conservative .93

While extremely conservative guys fit the stereotype, it's liberals who are angrier. The pattern is especially clear for women. Very conservative women are the calmest of the bunch.

Now, how do we explain this? Anger comes from the perception that one is not being treated fairly, so perhaps liberals are the type of people who see themselves as frequent victims of injustice.

So there is a message here for libs: chill people, anger's not good for you. Do yourself a favor and look for something positive.