Anger at Work

Anger is a source of diminished functioning and performance at work, and can have negative consequences for individuals, teams, and organizations.

Problematic anger can cause major disruptions in the workplace and negatively influence individual performances as well as health and well-being across entire organizations. This is a particularly serious problem in high-risk occupations, where the consequences of prolonged, unhealthy anger can be devastating.

This book reveals the impact of anger on job performance and in the workplace context, with a particular focus on police, firefighters, and the military. This book aims to help researchers and practitioners distinguish healthy from unhealthy, unproductive anger and to understand its links to problems such depression, alcohol abuse, and PTSD.

Contributors examine new and useful conceptual frameworks such as moral injury, and typical risk factors and behaviors including risk-taking, irritability, hypervigilance, and chronic physiological activation. Anger is examined within individual and team contexts. Treatments and interventions, including cognitive bias modification, are presented to help clinicians and practitioners put these insights to practical use.

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Why Anger Matters: An Introduction
Amy B. Adler and David Forbes

I. Foundations

• Chapter 1. An Overview of Anger: A Common Emotion With a Complicated Backstory
  Jeffrey M. Osgood and Phillip J. Quartana
• Chapter 2. Anger as an Occupational Health Challenge for Employees in High-Risk Occupations
  Thomas W. Britt, Chloe A. Wilson, Eric B. Elbogen, Elizabeth E. Van Voorhees, and Kirsten Dillon

II. Organizational Context

• Chapter 3. Moral Injury and Anger in the Workplace
  Andrea J. Phelps, Lisa Dell, and Kim Murray
• Chapter 4. Emotional Culture and the Angry Team
  Olivia (Mandy) O'Neill
• Chapter 5. Anger and the Role of Supervisors at Work
  Leslie B. Hammer, James D. Lee, Cynthia D. Mohr, and Shalene J. Allen

III. Clinical Context

• Chapter 6. Anger in Occupations Characterized by Repeated Threat and Stress Exposure: The Longitudinal View in the Military Context
  Ellie Lawrence-Wood, Miranda van Hooff, and Alexander McFarlane
• Chapter 7. The Cost of Anger: Suicide in the U.S. Army
  James A. Naifeh, Oscar I. Gonzalez, Holly B. Herberman Mash, Carol S. Fullerton, and Robert J. Ursano
• Chapter 8. Clinical Interventions for Problematic Anger
  Leslie A. Morland, Lisa H. Glassman, Margaret-Anne Mackintosh, and Paula P. Schnurr
• Chapter 9. Cognitive Bias Interventions
  Gal Arad and Yair Bar-Haim

IV. Future Directions

• Chapter 10. Advancing Anger Research
  David Forbes and Amy B. Adler

Index

About the Editors

Amy B. Adler, PhD, is a research clinical psychologist and senior consultant with the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and is acting director of the Research Transition Office at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

She cochairs the Army’s Psychological Health and Resilience research program and has published more than 100 articles and coedited six books.

Dr. Adler is also an associate editor of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and a fellow of APA.

David Forbes, PhD, is the director of the Phoenix Australia Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne.

Dr. Forbes is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience in the assessment and treatment of mental health problems following trauma and has worked in both acute crisis and continuing care settings across the community mental health system and in specialist traumatic stress services. He is an international expert in posttraumatic stress disorder and military mental health.

Dr. Forbes has published more than 110 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and sits on the editorial board of leading international journals. He is a member of many advisory committees for governments and other organizations, including the Departments of Veterans’ Affairs and Defence, and the Australian Psychological Society.

He has a strong track record in leading initiatives to improve outcomes for people affected by trauma through the translation of research into effective policy and practice.

Anger at Work should be required reading for managers and workers in all organizations. The team of experts assembled by Drs. Adler and Forbes present critical, must-have knowledge on how to manage problematic anger. Doing so will make for a safer and more productive workplace.
—Michael D. Matthews, PhD, Professor of Engineering Psychology, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, United States

In recent decades, the unfortunate impact of problematic anger at work has captured international headlines. Adler and Forbes’s benchmark book on workplace anger provides a roadmap of critical research gaps that must be addressed targeting prevention, intervention, and treatment of workplace anger.
—Alan L. Peterson, PhD, ABPP, Professor, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Director, The STRONG STAR Consortium, San Antonio, TX, United States

At last we have a book that addresses the key issue of anger in the workplace. Teachers, scholars, and practitioners will want this resource close to hand. It gives us an accessible and comprehensive guide for understanding and managing anger in high-risk workplaces. This book fills an urgent need. It is a must-have for anyone dealing with the well-being of workers, employers, or agencies.
—Richard Bryant, PhD, DSc, Professor of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Anger is one of the most highly expressed emotions at work and has a powerful influence on organizational life, including high-risk professions. This book offers a unique perspective, using the knowledge of experts to address anger across domains, and taking a practical "how to" approach. By sparking ideas about how to understand and manage this challenging emotion, this book will be valuable for anyone—theorists or practitioners—working with organizational behavior.
—Sigal Barsade, PhD, Joseph Frank Bernstein Professor of Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia