Something You Should Know - How Our Brains Experience Taste & The Upside of Anger - SYSK Choice

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

It makes sense that people cry when they are sad – but why do some of us cry when we are happy? This episode starts by examining how two opposite emotions can create the same symptom. By the way, what happy occasion do you think causes people to cry “tears of joy” most often? Hint: It’s not weddings. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141111124047.htm Flavor and taste are not the same thing. In fact, your sense of taste actually involves all your senses and is more complex than you ever imagined. For example, why do you like some foods that other people hate? Here to explain all this and more is food scientist Camilla Arndal Andersen. Listen as she helps us understand your interesting, complicated and subjective sense of taste. Camilla has a TED talk on this topic which you can watch here: https://www.ted.com/talks/camilla_arndal_andersen_what_happens_in_your_brain_when_you_taste_food?language=en What causes you to get angry? When you do get angry, are you good at dealing with it? Could you ever wish you could handle your anger better? Listen as I explore these questions with Ryan Martin. He is a professor of psychology and associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and has studied anger extensively. He has a TED talk about anger called The Upside of Anger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfcQaXG_Qhs). Listen and you will get a better understanding of your own anger. Children skip. You probably used to when you were young but don’t anymore. After all, seeing an adult skipping down the road might seem a bit odd. Listen as I discuss this and you might find yourself skipping anyway no matter how strange you might look. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3895968/Why-adults-stop-skipping-s-hard-Activity-uses-quarter-energy-running-speed.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. Sure, people cry when they're sad, but why do some people cry when they're happy? Then, understanding all the things that affect flavor and taste. Temperature, for example. It's extremely complicated because temperature will affect the taste and the smell. You know this from ice cream. Melted ice cream will taste incredibly sweet. But if you eat it frozen, then it doesn't taste as sweet.

Also, kids skip. But when was the last time you skipped? You should, and I'll tell you why. Then, understanding why we get angry. There are a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's about treatment and how we feel we should be treated. There's a lot of what other psychologists have referred to as shouldistic thinking, right? I should be treated this way.

Other people should do this. That plays into whether or not we get angry. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times,

relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hey, welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever been so happy that you cried tears of joy? I suspect everybody has, but the whole idea of tears of joy never made sense to one Yale psychologist, because, after all, you're supposed to cry when you're sad, not when you're happy.

So she decided to look into this, and what she found was really interesting. It seems that people who cry when they're happy are so overwhelmed by the positive emotions that they're feeling, the crying helps to regulate those overpowering emotions. It helps people recover and come back to normal from those strong emotions. And in her research, she found that people are more likely to cry tears of joy at their child's graduation than any other occasion. And that is something you should know. Not a day goes by that you don't taste food.

And yet you probably don't think too much about it. But what makes a food taste good? You probably like some sweet foods, some salty foods, all kinds of foods. And then there are probably foods you don't like the taste of. And there are probably foods you didn't like before, but now you do. So why is that? Camilla Arndahl-Anderson is a food scientist in Denmark who studies people's sense of taste. And she has a TED Talk on the subject. She's here to help you better understand why you like some foods and not others. Hi, Camilla.

So what is our sense of taste anyway? Yeah, so let's first get the definition right. When we sense food, we sense it with all our five senses. And these senses are the sight, so we see our food. It's also hearing, like for example, when you eat popcorn or crisps, you hear the food. You also smell it, you taste it. And then we have this weird sense called somatosensation, which covers touch temperature and pain. So when you say that you're tasting food, most people actually use that term incorrectly because they use it to cover both smell and taste. But these are actually two separate things. But they feel like all part

of the same thing. They seem that way. That's it. That's it completely right that's actually why we have a separate term called flavor so the flavor covers the smell the taste and then the touch temperature these three senses because there's so combined like i don't when i experience an orange i don't experience the taste of an orange i experience an orange and that's't experience the taste of an orange. I experience an orange, and that's the smell, it's the taste, it's the juiciness. So you're absolutely right. They're very combined in our experience of the food. And our experience of food is so subjective. It seems to be so influenceable by so many other things.

And you talk in your TED Talk about how you gave your husband two different cups of coffee. You told him they were two different kinds of coffee, and so he perceived them as very different, and yet it was the same coffee in both cups. And, you know, we can like some food one day and not like it so much the next, or it might be good in the morning and not so good in the evening. not like it so much the next, or it might be good in the morning and not so good in the evening. Why is it so subjective? That's a good question. So when we taste food, we both have the physical sensation. This is sour, this is sweet, this is bitter, right? And then we have another thing. That's how we we like it and typically what we say is that we

taste the food the same way whether it's in the morning on the afternoon whether we are at a party or whether we're at home it tastes the same but the liking of this food might change dramatically depending on what your past experiences are with this food or where you're located. So liking especially is very subjective, where we usually say that the taste itself is more objective or the same, doesn't depend on the environment so much. But when, again, the example in your talk about your husband tasting the same coffee twice and perceiving it very differently, what's going on there?

Yeah. So although I'm saying that things should taste the same no matter if it's in the morning or if it's in the afternoon, when we put food in our mouths, it is sent via, it is first registered via our receptors. This information is sent to our brain. Our brain processes this information heavily. And then we experience just a very condensed part of this information. So when we experience food, we don't experience it one-to-one. It's not physical stimuli that are converted one-to-one to our conscious experience. There's a lot of processing in between.

And in all of this processing, there are factors such as the environment, past experiences, biases that affect how we actually consciously experience the food. And my husband, he obviously had a bias. He thought that I was serving him two different coffees. So his brain started interpreting these sensory signals. Although they were the same, it put this pattern on top, this bias that they must be different. So now I'm going to serve my husband two different conscious experiences of this coffee.

Well, this must make your job as a food scientist and someone who studies people's sense of taste very difficult because people's sense of taste changes and something may be good one day, not good the next, or expectations may be that something tastes good, so it does. And so how do you make sense of that? It's extremely difficult. So what we do in the food industry, if we want to make food more delicious, well, we take a food item and then we make different variants of it. And then we serve it to people and we ask them, what do they prefer? What do they like most? But if I ask them whether they like the products at all, then they're probably going to say,

oh, yes, they like it. But they're probably going to say that because of this bias we have. It's called a courtesy bias where we like to be kind to people. So they would like to be kind to me. So they say they like it. It's actually very similar to when you visit your mother-in-law and she makes food and maybe it's slightly burnt. But you're not going to say it's burnt. You're going to say it tastes delicious. It's this courtesy bias, and it's built in us. And it's actually a problem when I want to optimize my food to make it taste better, because people are going to say it tastes good.

Also, maybe if I want to see do participants, do they like if a product is organic or not, then they might be inclined to say that they prefer the product that's organic. But when it comes to it, when they actually go to the supermarket and buy the product, maybe they're not going to behave as what they told me they would. We've seen this in several studies. We've seen that up to 80% of new food market launches, they fail. And that's although we have asked people, what do they like? What do they prefer? But it seems as though people, maybe they're not lying, but maybe they're lying to themselves.

So, yeah, it's a huge problem. Is there a sense as to why it is that some people love a certain food and other people hate it? Can you just chalk it up to that's just preference? I mean, for example, some people like I love beets. I love to eat beets, but a lot of people really hate beets. And I can't understand that. They taste great. But why is that? Is it conditioning? Is it expectation? Is it just because their parents hated beets and now they hate beets?

What is it? Yeah. So when I said before that it is assumed that we all taste the same, there are studies that say that we don't taste exactly the same. There are some people that are more susceptible to bitter compounds, for example. They simply have receptors that can detect certain bitter compounds better, which means that if a beet is more bitter, which it is, it's bitter, then these people would experience this beet as more bitter. And bitterness is usually a taste that we need to learn it. We don't like beer the first time we have beer,

because beer is bitter. But once we've tried it a few times, we learn to like it. But it could also be, as you say, it could also be that your conditions, maybe your grandmother made a nice dish with it. It could be a lot of reasons. We're talking about taste and flavor and why you may like some foods that I don't and I may like some foods that you don't. My guest is Camilla Arndahl-Anderson. She is a food scientist in Denmark. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world. Because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow.

Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings

and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So Camilla, another thing that I find interesting too when you eat or drink certain things is the

temperature. Like when you drink like a glass of wine and if it's really cold, you kind of taste the cold and you don't taste the wine because it's so cold. Whereas if it was a little warmer, you would taste the wine and you wouldn't notice the cold so much. Yeah, temperature. It's extremely complicated how we sense food because temperature will affect the taste and the smell higher. So, for example, you know this from ice cream. Melted ice cream will taste incredibly sweet. But if you eat it frozen, then it doesn't taste as sweet.

So temperature modifies the sweetness, for example. So that's the taste. But temperature also modifies the smell. And I think when you say you taste red wine, I think most of it is actually smell. It's the aromas that you're detecting. And this is a tricky part. I think that's why most people, they confuse smell and taste. It's because this smell, we actually smell also via our mouth it's not just via our nose from the outside so just a super neat trick to figure out whether you're tasting the wine or whether the effect is a smell then take the wine in your mouth, or maybe actually stop, have the wine in the glass.

Then pinch your nose real tight and take a sip. Take a sip, and while you're pinching your nose, it might be a bit difficult. It's possible. Trust me. And then you'll feel the taste and just the taste. And then let it set for a while. Then remove your fingers, take a deep breath, and now you'll get the aroma from the wine. So that's a really neat way to figure out what is the aroma I'm sensing from the wine, what is the taste I'm sensing from the wine. It also seems that expectation plays a big role in this, that at least my experience. And here's a quick story. I went to a winery. It was an apple winery. And they had all the glasses out, oh, taste this, and this is really good. And oh, smell, and you'll sense the thing. And it was this big production. It was a big presentation. And by the end of it, you're thinking, yeah, this is pretty good.

And then I bought a bottle of it, and I took it home, and it was horrible. And it was the same thing I was drinking, but I was kind of caught up in the show. But objectively, this stuff was terrible. Yep. I also think that's why so much money is spent on marketing. I once heard of a study that said that one could measure that people actually preferred Pepsi, but they kept on buying Coca-Cola anyways. That the marketing can do a lot. It can, because we don't really think about the taste.

We don't close our eyes and do a test like what I did on my husband. But maybe you should. Right. Well, when you go into a fancy restaurant, you have an expectation. The food here is probably pretty good. Just because there's tablecloths on the table, it's decorated well, has nothing to do with the food, but you just assume that a fancy restaurant like this with expensive menu prices, food's probably pretty good. Exactly. So that's when my husband, he came home and he said that, Camilla, I found this new fantastic yet very expensive coffee and it's much better than the cheap one. That's when I was thinking, just like you're thinking right now, that this is just an expectation effect and just a small blindfold actually showed me this result so yes you're right is there any food that everybody likes i imagine people generally

like sweet things i mean it's hard to imagine somebody doesn't like sweet things but but are there foods that pretty much everybody likes um just going back to that sweet thing, we actually typically study, they would group people as sweet likers and sweet non-likers. There are several groups. That's because some people, when you increase the sugar concentration,

then at some point they start disliking because it becomes too intensive. And depending on how you like that, you can actually group people. And I think it's a trend as you get older, you dislike sweetness more and more. And whether there is something that all people like, well, there are these very cute studies on babies where scientists, they put sugar, water on baby's lips, and then they see the baby smacking, and they interpret this as a liking. So they like it even before they've been taught what this is. So they interpreted this as an innate lacking response to sugar and explained it as a vital cue that was used through evolution because sugar meant that the fruit was ripe, meaning that this is when. Ripe fruits has a lot of vitamins and carbohydrates. So sweet food would indicate calories and vitamins. So sweetness is a good sense to have.

Same with bitter. Poisonous compounds often taste bitter. So babies are typically seen to retract from bitterness put on their lips. But whether there's something that everyone likes, I don't know that food, no. I would imagine environment has a lot to do with taste. I mean, for example, when I go to the movies, I usually get popcorn. A lot of people eat popcorn at the movies. I almost never eat popcorn anywhere else. I never eat it at home.

I never eat it, except when I go to the movies. Yes, so the environment has a lot of cues, and we read these cues. Sometimes it's conscious, sometimes it's subconscious. And for example, it's bakeries. I've heard they use a strategy where they actually pump out the smell from the freshly baked buns onto the road because just smelling freshly baked buns is a cue

such that you want a bun and go in and buy a bun. So marketing is done in many different ways in the food industry. Well, that makes sense because you're right. I mean, I would never think, oh, gosh, I've got to have a bun today. But if I walk by a bakery and smelled it, I'd go, hey, wait a minute. Let's go get. And it's probably very similar with the popcorn. You walk into a movie theater and what do you smell? You smell popcorn. And

then they go, oh yeah, let's get some popcorn. But I don't smell popcorn in my house, you know, walking around. So then I never think of it. And yet when I eat it at the movie theater, I really like it. But then that's it. Well, this has been really interesting and explains a lot of why some people love some food while other people hate that food. And some people like some food when they're kids but don't like it when they're adults. And it's really interesting how subjective it all really is. Camilla Arndahl Anderson has been my guest. She's a food scientist in Denmark, and she has a TED Talk on this subject. There's a link to that in the show notes.

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Insurance designed for life. When was the last time you got mad? Probably not that long ago. Because, well, people get mad. It's human. Why do we get mad? Is there value in it? Some people get mad, and's human. Why do we get mad? Is there value in it? Some people get mad and their anger gets them in trouble.

Other people are able to use their anger constructively. So let's get really clear and specific about why you get mad and what you should do with that anger with my guest, Ryan Martin. Ryan is a professor of psychology and associate dean at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and he teaches courses on mental illness, emotion, anger, and violence. Hi, Professor. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for having me. Sure. So why do we get mad? I mean, I think I know why I get mad.

I get mad usually because something or someone has done something to upset me. Yep, that's what a lot of people say, right? I get mad because people keep messing with me and causing me problems and grief. And sometimes it is actually as simple as that. Most of the time, though, it is a lot more complicated. And so, of course, it starts with something that we perceive as a provocation, right? This is some sort of stimulus in our environment, usually, that we interpret as being either like goal blocking, so it interferes with our ability to achieve some goal, or we consider it unjust or unfair. Now, what matters most, though, is not necessarily, I mean, of course, there are things that are going to be inherently angering.

But at the same time, a big part of this is how we interpret that stimulus or that provocation. So we, on some level, have to decide this is unfair or this is blocking my goals. We also have to decide how bad this is unfair, or this is blocking my goals. We also have to decide how bad this is. You know, is this going to ruin my day, my week, my month, my year, my life, my career? And if we say, hey, this is blocking my goals, and it's catastrophic, we're way more likely to get angry. Well, sure. If it's going to be catastrophic and ruin my week or my month or my year, that's going to make me angry. But, you know, I remember hearing somebody say, I think it was about stress, but it seems to apply here, that you get angry because things aren't the way you want them to be, that something shows up that gets in your way, which is what you were just saying. It blocks your goal, and you get stressed out because things aren't the way you want them to be, and then it's what you do with that that determines how things go. Right. And so, I mean, I think that is a very nice, simple way of putting it, right? We get angry when things aren't the way

we want them to be, and sometimes that is because our goals are being blocked. And I define goals very broadly. So sometimes a goal is, you know, I'm trying to achieve a particular thing in my career. But sometimes a goal is I'm trying to get coffee and the line at Starbucks is too long. And so, you know, goals can mean a lot of different things. Sometimes that's about kind of treatment and how we feel we should be treated. There's a lot of different things. Sometimes that's about kind of treatment and how we feel we should be treated. There's a lot of what other psychologists have referred to as shouldistic thinking, right? I should be treated this way. Other people should do this. That plays into whether or not we get angry. To go back to your point, too, about, you know, yeah, if something's going to ruin my day or week or year or career, I'm going to get angry.

A big part of this, though, is that sometimes those things aren't really going to ruin our day or week or year. We just think they are in the moment. And you oftentimes hear people say later, like, yeah, I realize now that this being stopped by the train this morning wasn't catastrophic, but it sure felt catastrophic at the time. Isn't that always the case that so often things seem so much worse than retrospect tells you they were? That in the moment they just seem, oh my God, this is just ruining my day.

That guy just took my parking spot. Well, so what? But at the time it just feels crazy-making God, this is just ruining my day. That guy just took my parking spot. Well, so what? But at the time, it just feels crazy-making, and it makes you angry. And what's the point of that? Yeah, so I'm going to share a story about 16, 17 years ago. I was on my way to my first ever professional conference. It was the American Psychological Association Conference. It was in Chicago. And I was staying outside of town. So I allowed plenty of time to, I thought,

to get into town the next morning and get there in time for my first ever session. And massive torrential rains occurred. It ended up taking me what a drive that would normally take between 45 minutes an hour ended up taking about an hour and a half, making me a good 20 minutes late for my session. And I spent the first part of that time just fuming in my car and just saying, wow, this is the worst thing that's ever happened. It's going to destroy my career, you know, and I was thinking about how, you know, how mad my advisor would be at me from being late. And he wasn't even going to be there, by the way. But, you know, all of these things. And then finally, at one point, stopped and really sort of asked myself the questions that

I encourage lots of people to ask themselves. And that's, you know, how bad is this really? What is the real outcome here? And, you know, kind of establish, well, it's embarrassing. Nobody wants to be late for things. And that is definitely true. But were people going to understand given the weather? Yeah, I think they would. You know, how many people was my advisor even going to find out? I mean, he would because I told him, but it's not as though this was going to somehow get back to him in some sort of way. That would be really upsetting, and I'm certain he would understand. And sometimes when we take the time to really walk through those questions, we realize, you know what, the outcome of this isn't as catastrophic as we think

it's going to be. The outcome is actually pretty manageable, and with some simple problem solving, we can deal with it. And doesn't it also seem, and you're using your example, so you're running late and you're upset, and then if you got like five minutes from where you were going and the road was closed, that would make you like compound it more than if the road had, if it was just that the road was closed, because it's like the hole is bigger than the sum of its parts. It just adds to it and makes it worse and worse and worse. And yet each one of those things would be relatively manageable. Yeah. You know, earlier when you asked why we get mad, and one piece that I neglected to mention is what we call the pre-anger state. And the pre-anger

state is the mood we're in right when the stimulus or the provocation happens. So what is my mood when I hit that red light or when I hit that train? I got stopped by a train this morning, by the way, two days in a row, which is why I keep coming up with this example. So what mood was I in when that happened? And if we are hungry, if we are tired, if we are stressed, or if we are already angry, it makes things that much worse. And you're right, it does sort of compound. It becomes, in some ways, you know, we use the expression, you know, just one more thing, but it doesn't feel like just one more thing on a pile of problems that end up kind of locking us in and exaggerating or enhancing that anger that we feel. Right. Well, it gets to the point where it feels as if the world is just sabotaging your life. It's just like it's one thing after another. And then it

doesn't it seem like then you start to look for things that are going to make you even more angry, just to verify and confirm that indeed the world is sabotaging your life. Yep. And so there's two really important psychological concepts that you just brought up. One of them is one of the types of angry thinking that we consider is called overgeneralizing. And it's when you start using words like always and never. So I always hit every red light or things never go my way. And people tend to do this when, especially chronically angry people, tend to do this. They tend to pull out this overgeneralizing. And, of course, it makes everything seem so much worse, right? If I interpret getting

stomped at a red light as, oh, this is disappointing. I don't like it when this happens. That's a very different type of thought than this happens all the time, right? Or I hit every red light or I always hit every red light, which is another one, right? So two overgeneralizations. The other thing you mentioned is something we refer to as mood or emotion-specific memories. And one of the things we know is that when you're in a particular mood, whether you're sad or angry or scared or just even in a negative mood, you tend to remember things. It's easier for you to remember things that are angering or scary or sad. And so we do actually sort of either pick out angering

memories or we pick out negative emotional experiences in our life when we're feeling a certain way. And what does that do? It would seem to me from my own experience that when I get angry, when I get upset about things getting in my way, it somehow inhibits my ability to solve them because that anger thing is right in my face and I can't objectively look at the problem. Yeah, one of the downsides of anger is that it tends to lock our thinking in a little bit and close our minds down. And so we know that people are actually most creative when they are in a good mood, when they are happy. And so researchers have found this through what we call

mood induction research, where you basically put people in a good mood by making them happy, by making them laugh, showing them videos of happy-making things. And then you ask them to do creative tasks or tasks that require creativity. And you find that people are more creative when they are in a good mood. They're less creative when they're sad or angry. And so that is one of the downsides here is that even though I would argue that in many cases, anger is good for us and healthy, it does tend to lock our thinking down into one particular way. And we are less able to solve problems if and when we get locked into that. So Ryan, your TED Talk's called The Upside of Anger, but I haven't heard any of that yet. So what's the benefit of this? Yeah, so the benefit really comes from, and I'm glad you asked, that if we think about emotions, as I do, from an evolutionary perspective, and so we think about

the value they served our ancestors, both human and non-human, they essentially, in the case of anger, it alerts us to injustice. So it's one of the ways that our brain communicates to us that we've been treated badly. And then more importantly, or as importantly, it energizes us to confront that injustice. So when your heart rate increases, when your muscles tense up, when you get kind of that tunnel vision focused on a particular problem, that's really your body energizing you to confront whatever that thing is. The catch is that if we think about it from an evolutionary perspective, again, our brains aren't necessarily designed to help us channel that anger into an adaptive way of responding to the threat. You know, our ancestors dealt with those sorts of injustices through aggression, and so our brains are sort of built to do that. And so we have to find ways to catch ourselves

and to channel that anger into something more productive, something more helpful. How do you do that? Yeah, so that's the part that requires practice. We need to get used to being able to catch ourselves and make the intentional decisions to catch ourselves before we've acted in any kind of aggressive way. We need to catch ourselves and start to think about the ways in which we can use this more productively. And maybe that's, you know, if our anger is stemming from a political issue, maybe that's protest. Maybe it's writing letters to the editor. Maybe it's voting. I talk to a lot of artists and writers who talk about how their anger kind of fuels their art, fuels their sculpting, fuels their poetry.

You mentioned earlier that evolutionarily humans use aggression to get out their anger. And, you know, I remember there was talk about, you know, when you're angry, you should punch a pillow or whatever. Is it a good idea to, if you're angry, to express it through non-threatening aggression, like, you know, go in a room and scream or punch a pillow or what? Is that a good idea? No. So it's actually, I'm glad you asked because it's actually a terrible idea. We have years and years, decades actually of research on what we call the catharsis myth. And that is the idea that it's smart to go punch a pillow or break things. Or, you know, we've seen over the last 10 years or so these rage rooms cropping up all over where people can just go and break things. Ultimately, it goes back to that practice makes permanent thing that I mentioned before, that those places and that behavior, it just means that you're more likely to act in that aggressive way when you are angered.

And so it doesn't ultimately get your anger out or get your aggression out. It kind of leaves it at the surface and teaches you that the best way to deal with it is through violence. And so we pretty actively discourage people from doing that. Sure seems like it would help sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting thing about it is that people tell me, but it feels good, right? And that's probably true. It does feel good to break things when you're aggressive. But as we know from a host of other sorts of phenomena, just because something feels good doesn't mean it's actually good for you. But I know for myself, if I'm angry, or maybe it's just if I'm stressed, but stress and anger seem to walk hand in hand here and maybe cut from the same mold. But if I'm angry and upset about something, and let's say I go to the gym and lift weights, I feel better.

I feel less stressed. I feel less angry. So it seems that that aggression works. So this is one interesting caveat, is that we do find that exercise, when you're not angry, of course, is good for you and is a stress reliever. Exercise, when you're angry, tends to kind of have a similar impact as some of that catharsis that I was talking about, that it ends up being another form of catharsis. This is one of those findings that was actually surprising to me. I always assumed that exercise when you're angry is great for you, and that's a good thing to do, but it tends to have that same sort of outcome as catharsis,

where you're kind of breaking things and things like that. Part of it's just that in some ways it's funny, because if you think about it in terms of fear, you would never assume that when you're really, really scared of something that the smart thing to do is to go for a run. You know, you would, or at least I would think that that wouldn't be a healthy response. The same thing ends up being true of anger. What you want to do is try and relax, try and take deep breaths to decrease that already present elevation of heart rate and

muscle tension and things like that. Well, that's interesting because that doesn't feel right to me, what you just said, but maybe it's also when you're angry and upset and you go to the gym or you go anywhere else, you get distracted and you get some distance on your problem and maybe you get less angry. But anyway, what's the big takeaway here, do you think? It goes back to that model I started with about why we get mad. And if you think about the provocation and the pre-anger state and how we appraise our anger and then those angry feelings and then what we do with our anger, if you think about that whole picture, to me, the key to quote unquote anger management is thinking about how your anger works in a given situation and where to intervene. So if I know that a provocation for me is driving and that I get really stressed out when I'm running late and getting stuck in traffic,

well, then I can make some very easy changes to my life that helps me minimize how often I experience that provocation. I just always count on more time or I don't let myself get low on gas. That's another big one for me. I get stressed out when I feel like I might run out of gas or something. Those are changes I can make to my life to intervene there. If I know that I tend to lash out when I'm sleep-deprived, well, then I can do a better job of getting healthy sleep. If I know that I tend to catastrophize,

well, then I can work on that in the moment and start thinking about the actual impact of this particular provocation on me and what the consequences are going to be. If I know that, you know, I tend to behave in a particular way that's problematic, well, I can start to direct my anger into more positive approaches and more positive outcomes. Well, since we all get angry, it's good to hear that, A, you know, it's normal, everybody does it,

and it's probably good to get angry once in a while, but also that you can do things about it to mitigate your anger so it doesn't get in the way so much. Ryan Martin has been my guest. He is a professor of psychology and associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. And he has a really interesting TED Talk about this called The Upside of Anger, which we

have a link to that in the show notes. Thank you, Professor. You bet. It was really nice talking to you. You remember skipping. You skipped when you were a kid. Kids skip all the time, but grown-ups don't. The assumption is that adults don't skip because they don't want to look childish, but scientists have another theory. Skipping just takes too much energy. In fact, skipping uses 24% more power than running the same distance.

Still, there is something about skipping, because not only do children do it, but so do lizards and birds and other creatures. And if you want to burn more calories and you don't care what people think, you really should skip. And that is something you should know. And now that the show is over, grab your device and push whatever you need to push and leave a rating and review for this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk

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