Intervening to Manage Anger: Road Rage

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Intervening to Manage Anger Road Rage

• Dr Cameron Newton MAPS
• Centre of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies
• Queensland University of Technology

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Scope of activities

• Feedback to employees and groups of employees
• Self-evaluation and awareness
• Triggers, thoughts, reactions
• Reasoning
• Attribution
• Information provision
• Why get angry and consequences
• Understand the process of anger and escalation
• Skills
• help individuals to identify the beginning signs
  of frustration and what they can do about it
• Change to norms
• Increase importance ascribed to safety values
• Pro-social norms

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Self-evaluation and awareness
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Identify the triggers

• What cheeses me off???
• Context road and off-road
• Activity to identify the potential triggers
  (individual approach debrief as a group)
• Document
• Usual responses
• Other cutting in
• Changing lanes without indicating
• Dangerous maneuvers

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Identify the cognitions - others

• What are the things you are thinking as people do
  things the annoy you?
• Individual identification and/or collated and
  documented as a group
• Context road
• Usual responses
• Swearing about other person
• Thats dangerous
• That person needs to taught a lesson

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Identify the behaviours

• What do you do when others annoy you and you have
  these (negative) thoughts?
• Individual activity with responses collated and
  documented as a group
• Usual responses include
• Chase the person (to teach as lesson)
• Give them the finger
• Yell out at them
• Try to catch up to do any of the above and more
  (elicit a chase)

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Reasoning

• Pose a series of questions
• Is it ok to think and behave in this way?
• What are our individual justifications?
• Do they make sense?
• If ambulance cuts in what are we thinking and
  what do we do?
• If others do it (e.g.., not an ambulance, what
  are we thinking and what do we do?
• Why does this make sense?
• What is it that is different about the ambulance
  example?
• THOUGHTS
• Our responses (in terms of behaviours) are
  MODERATED by our thoughts we can be driven by
  our thoughts to change our responses to triggers
• The responsibility is OURS as individuals

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Identify cognitions - us

• Not all perfect have drifted lanes, run a red
  light, cut in front of someone
• What are the reasons that we use when we do it?
• Usual responses
• In a rush
• Thinking about something else
• In a rush
• Distracted by something on the radio
• On the phone
• Already in an argument

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Attribution

• Focal concept in self-management of anger
• Others - we attribute their behaviour to them
  personally
• the person is bad/wrong/flawed in some way
• Us attribute our behaviour more globally
• we are doing it because something else is going
  on that is causing us to act in that way
• There is an unbalanced perspective that polarizes
  our cognitions defends our own rights and
  behaviours as individuals
• A fundamental reason for angry situations to
  develop on the roads

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Information provision
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Why do we get angry on the road?

• Anonymity in a traffic situation
• Sensation seeking
• In an angry mood already
• Belief that have superior driving skills
• In a rush
• Traffic congestion

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Consequences

• Image of organisation
• Legal issues
• Criminal offence
• Injury to self or others
• Fines
• Loss of position in organisation
• Family impact

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The ANGER Process

• Natural physiological reaction hard to handle
• Anger trajectory - imagine 0 to 100 scale
• Escalation happens quickly
• Starts with frustration
• What happens when get frustrated?
• Clenched fists, teeth
• Increased heart rate
• Sweating/feeling hot
• Trembling
• Shallow/rapid breath
• At about 40, anger escalates takes off in terms
  of the severity of the emotion and in terms of
  the ability to be able to control the emotions
  being experienced

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Anger what cant we do

• Cant teach others a lesson
• 5 second exchange at best no real form of
  verbal or nonverbal communication
• Cant communicate the message you want to in the
  available time
• Cant communicate safely
• Cant control others behaviour
• Might want to but just cant
• Enough trouble managing our own in an angry
  exchange

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Skills
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Anger before hitting the 40 mark

• More control over this part of the process
• Interventions
• Awareness of body cues
• Clenched fists, teeth
• Increased heart rate
• Sweating/feeling hot
• Trembling
• Shallow/rapid breath
• Thought replacement
• Think green light thoughts that is, replace
  the angry cognitions with the cognitions or
  reasons that were identified with regard to why
  we do things that could make others angry
• EG maybe theyre lost, I think that person
  is a bit distracted lets just get out of the
  way

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After hitting the 40 mark

• Much harder to control
• Need to work on reducing the physiology of the
  anger process
• Interventions include
• All others that were identified for below the 40
  mark
• Count to ten
• Calming self talk
• Slow and deep breathing

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Hook

• Heart attack patient intervention
• About identifying and not responding to triggers
• Come up against about 30 potential triggers in
  any one day
• If respond to all become very angry useless
  responses though as many of these events wont be
  remembered by the end of the day

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Hook imagery

• Fish swimming in a stream
• If fish bites on every hook, is not going to live
  long
• Fundamental notion
• Swim on by, ignore the triggers
• Replace anger zone with calm zone (more
  rational) thoughts

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Changing norms
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Changing norms

• Increase importance ascribed to prosocial driving
  behaviours
• Develop a culture of safe and pro-social driving
• Sorry
• Thank-you
• Doing nothing
• Wave

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Culture Change Strategic Action Steps

• Identify small wins
• Generate social support - empower agents
• Provide information and feedback
• Measure - record
• Explain why
• Implement symbolic change as well as substantive
  change

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Overall

• Have the responsibility to control our own
  responses
• Accept that responsibility
• Elect to choose control rather than losing
  control
• THINK about what you are thinking examine your
  thoughts
• THINK about what you are doing does it achieve
  anything? who is it helping?