Getting mad

A new study shows women can keep anger in and still be OK.

By Amy Standen

Mar 22, 2000 | Deborah Cox comes from a small, conservative town in the South. Growing up, she sensed that many women of her parents' generation were "infinitely furious," stockpiling their grievances like canned vegetables. It was, she felt, a simmering frustration born of and sustained by the women's lack of influence in their community. As long as the women remained silent about the cause of their anger, they failed to take action on their own behalf.

Later, Cox fled the South and the local women's normative tradition of silent suffering. (Hers is not the personality of someone mired in hidden rage.) But she continues to be an ardent observer of human behavior and social mores.

Now a psychologist at Southwest Missouri State University, Cox recently conducted a study of 203 women in an effort to get to the bottom of that enduring mystery of her youth: Are women who suppress their anger more likely to feel ineffective, powerless -- less "instrumental," in her words -- than those who don't?

The results surprised her, and they also pointed to a puzzling discrepancy between women's health and happiness: Many women who withhold anger nevertheless described themselves as effective, successful and assertive.

At a recent Congress on Women's Health in San Francisco, Cox and six other women gathered to present their findings from recent studies on women and anger. The presentations began with the results of another, broader study on anger, led by psychologist Sandra Thomas of the University of Tennessee. A few years ago, Thomas polled 535 women in an effort to determine what those of the gentle sex do when they're mad. And, like the women from Cox's hometown, it turns out that most of us hold it in.

Said one 21-year-old female in the Thomas study: "I don't think that a lot of us feel worthy of being angry. We want peace more than we want to actually express our anger and have somebody have to deal with it. It's a lot easier just to suppress it and not make anybody unhappy."

In psychologist-speak, this means that most women fit an "Anger/In" profile. Many studies on anger (including Cox's and Thomas', although both also used focus group discussions) draw heavily from a multiple-choice test designed to deliver "Anger/In, Anger/Out" scores. Responses to these questions place subjects along a continuum between, as you'd expect, those who display their anger and those who suppress it. Loosely speaking, this boils down to something like the venters and the martyrs, those who don't hesitate to let the world know when they're displeased and those who say "I'm fine, really" while they fume silently inside. A final group of questions identifies the physical manifestations of an anger behavior that isn't working.

Next Page: Women are more likely to deny their rage than men are

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