TOWriting down your thoughts and destroying them is an effective practice for relieving anger. A new Japanese study, conducted by Nagoya University, has demonstrated the effectiveness of this method. Here’s how it works.
Research
The researchers asked a group of university students to write short opinion pieces on some social issues, explaining that their writings would then be evaluated. The evaluations received from the volunteers were, purposely, all negative and accompanied by very critical comments. At that point, the researchers asked the students to write down their thoughts in relation to the evaluations they received, focusing on those comments that had triggered angry emotions in them. Then, they divided the volunteers into two groups: the first had to destroy what was written by throwing it in the bin or through a document shredder; the second group, however, had to keep their thoughts written down.
The results
The participants who destroyed the papers cooled off much more than those who kept them. The results of the study were published in the prestigious journal Scientific Reports of the Nature group. “We expected that our method would suppress anger to a certain extent,” said research leader Nobuyuki Kawai. “However, we were amazed that rabies was almost completely eliminated.”
