Correlation Study on Anger and Academic Achievement. Roswiyani Department of Psychology - Tarumanagara University Jakarta Indonesia

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1 Correlation Study on Anger and Academic Achievement Roswiyani Department of Psychology - Tarumanagara University Jakarta Indonesia Abstract Anger is a part of human response, yet it correlates on various unhealthy aspects of human life conditions. Spielberger (2004) for example has explained that anger in and anger out may cause various several medical concerns in the long run; on the contrary, various physical complains of a person may relate to the way the person expresses anger. In educational life, the way a student expresses anger may influence the academic achievement. The less capable the student manages anger, the worse the anger gives impact on academic achievement. This study is based on correlating behavioral anger response with academic achievement of students of a private university. Using correlation data analysis indicates that students with lower GPA score have more anger concerns than students with higher GPA score. Follow up analysis on several individual students indicates that they who have lower GPA score tend to have difficulties in managing their anger and tend to use their anger energy as a form of self-destructive behavior. Keywords: anger, achievement, students Introduction Any form of inconvenience, unpleasantness, or unsatisfied feelings in daily activities may cause anger (Clore & Centerbar, 2004), and those feelings appear as the result of the cognitive responses toward the condition that triggers or stimulates such feelings (Bouree, 1998). Anger is a form of human natural response (Linden, Hogan, Rutledge, Chawla, Lenz, & Leung, 2003). Any person may get angry toward an upsetting or an inappropriate condition (Boeree, 1998), yet the anger expression of each individual may be different (Linden et.al., 2003). In an educational setting, anger may influence a student s educational achievement (Lebelle, 2000). Various conditions potentially can stimulate student s anger. Unsatisfied feelings toward educational process can stimulate anger among students, and the way the students express their anger can influence their achievement (Lebelle, 2000) and also their health (Linden et.al., 2003). The frequencies of anger also can influence the psychophysical condition of a person. High intensity anger can create emotional reaction resulting destructiveness and threatening health (Linden, et.al., 2003). Anger condition relates to educational achievement (Labelle, 2000) besides influencing health (Spielberger, Johnson, Russell, & Crane, 1985). Various studies on anger reported that expressing anger or holding anger by repressing it are potentially threatening health, particularly heart problems (Spielberger et. al., 1985). Various studies on anger associated with social environment reported that the way a person expresses anger relates to social expression, and there are significant differences on anger

2 expression between males and females (Boman, 2003). Linden et al (2003) reported that there are 6 forms of anger expression, and thus more than just the previously three forms of anger as being reported by Spielberger et. al. (1985). The six anger forms are: a) direct anger out, b) assertion, c) social support-seeking, d) diffusion, e) avoidance, and f) rumination. Spielberger et. al. (1985) clearly stated that anger in and anger out are potentially creates negative impact on heart functioning, whereas anger control is health anger expression. As Linden et. al. (2003) mentioned that there are actually six rather than three forms of anger, there may be more variety of anger expressions associated with health and educational achievement. Besides, the concept of anger by Linden et. al. (2003) may broadened and add more information of the anger concept of Spielberger et. al. (1985). This study was conducted on university students in relation to efforts on paying more attention on educational condition and situation in a university. Various conditions in a university may stimulate anger, the interactions between members of an institution have potency to stimulate anger, and requirements in an educational setting can stimulate anger among students thus influencing their educational achievements as well as their health. This research is aimed at anticipating some conditions that have possibilities of inhibiting educational processes. In order to measure the anger response, this research uses BARQ (Behavior Anger Response Questionnaire) (Linden et. al., 2003). Anger Anger is a form of natural human response which can influence and threaten health from psychosomatic to heart problems (Linden et. al., 2003). Pauls and Stemmler (2003) reported that anger relates to heart activities. When a person gets angry, the heart activity escalates and the glands will release body chemical liquids as a form of defense mechanism. If the anger condition remains for a long period of time, and the person represses anger, the glands will release excessive amount of body chemicals and cause feeling of unpleasant and imbalance. Pauls and Stemmler (2003) mentioned that when a person feels threatened, the person needs to defend the self. In order to defend the self, the body will produce large amounts of chemicals to anticipate the threatening situation. Thus anger is a form of natural response toward a perception of threat. Anger even relates strongly with fear (Pauls & Stemmler, 2003). Every person can experience anger even though the person has no hostile feeling toward a particular situation or condition. However, when the condition provokes threatening atmosphere and the person feels unable to deal with the provoking stimuli, he or she will get angry (Linden et. al., 2003). Hostile is a form of character of a person that stimulates the feeling of disgust, indignation, contempt, and resentment (Linden et. al., 2003). Hostility tends to remain as an attitude of a person and this attitude is directed toward a particular and specific object. Anger, may

3 remain as long as the provoking stimuli exists and will disappear when the provoking stimuli does not exist anymore (Linden et. al., 2003). Normally anger is triggered by an unexpected situation that does not suitable to the individual. The gap between the expectation and the reality often times stimulates anger because a) the situation is perceived as a form of inhibition, b) the person feels unable to control the situation (Boeree, 1998). Therefore, environmental aspects have influence to stimulate anger. According to Bouree (1998) a person may direct the anger externally to others or internally to the self. They, who direct anger externally will tend to produce fight response, sometimes conduct destructive behavior toward the external object. Spielberger et.al. (1985) also reported that anger may be directed externally (anger out) or internally (anger in), and both will have negative consequences toward health, primarily on heart problems, because the escalation of heart activity during anger. The longer the anger remains, the harder the heart works and resulting fatigue. Furthermore, Spielberger et al (1985) explained that besides anger out and anger in there is anger control. Anger control is an appropriate anger response by controlling the anger toward appropriate direction so that does not create any destructiveness whether externally or internally. Anger Response In various studies on anger, Linden et. al. (2003) explained that the way a person expresses anger consists of six forms which are: a) direct anger out, b) assertion, c) support-seeking, d) diffusion, e) avoidance, and f) rumination. The direct anger out concept is similar to the concept by Spielberger et. al. (1985), thus a person tends to get angry to others and possible to conduct destructive behavior to others or to the environment. However, assertion (assertiveness) is a form of anger control (Spielberger et. al., 1985) thus directing anger by controlling it, non destructive and non resisting anger as well but transforming anger into alternative acts in accordance the needs yet appropriately. Support seeking act is a form of behavior in order to increase ability to do something and at the same time reducing helplessness in dealing with provoking stimuli. This act may appear in a form of gathering a group of people or hiding the self behind the power of others in order to obtain support on the anger behavior. Diffusing is blending or unifying anger emotion with other forms of emotion, sometimes with cognitive and behavior. These unification forms of emotion, cognition, and behavior may seemingly a unified form of act but on the other hand in anger context may appear as a form of confusion. Avoidance is an act keeping a distance of a person who tends to feel helpless in dealing with the provoking stimuli. Rumination is a form of repetitious thinking process on a particular topic for an extended period of time. The anger response in a form of rumination makes a person keeps the provoking stimuli over and over again and resulting feeling of unpleasant, yet the person may never conduct any effort to take action to deal with the stimuli. As a result the thinking process will remain stagnant on the same problems for a long time and he or she will have difficulties to free the self from anger.

4 Anger and Gender Various reports explained that cultures influence anger behavior (Boman, 2003). For example in a particular culture, a wife should not express anger to her husband since it is inappropriate, but the husband can express anger to his wife. In some cultures, women are allowed to express anger in a particular fashion, and men have different way anger expression. For example, crying as anger expression is allowed for ladies in many cultures, but crying as anger expression is considered as inappropriate for males. Thus anger relates to gender (Boman, 2003). Boman (2003) reported that in the US there is significant different between female and male anger expression. Boman conducted his research on 102 US high school students (55 males and 47 females; 87% Caucasian, 13% Asian, and 5% Caucasian- Asian). According to Boman (2003) adolescent males tend to behave more physically than females in expressing anger such as being physically aggressive, and this tendency creates hostility. Such condition does not exist among adolescent females. Achievement In many societies, a person s intelligence is normally evaluated based on the achievement (Deckers, 2010). An achievement is a result of an act that causes change (s), associated with a person s need to gain something fast (Beck, 2004), and a continuous effort to do the best for the sake of work improvement and innovation (Rogelberg, 2007). Need of achievement is a motive to obtain success with the characteristic of doing better than before, that surpasses the previous internal and external standard. The standard may be based on work standard, school standard, other people standard or from the self. A person s need of achievement may be considered passive until being activated by a clue to achieve such as by the act of learning (Deckers, 2010). A high achiever tends to take mediocre level of risk taking behavior and tend to choose mediocre level of challenge in order to evaluate their success (Rogelberg, 2007). McClelland explained that the development of achievement need relates to positive reward on the previous achievement (Beck, 2004). Spence and Helmreich (Beck, 2004) explained that the dimension of achievement relates to satisfaction on conducting a particular task which creates feeling of mastery. Furthermore, the ability to accomplish a task is associated with feeling of completion, and ability to compete (competitiveness) with others. Method Participants This quantitative non experimental research was conducted on students of a private university with age range of years old. Instrument The research instrument is Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ) by Linden et. al. (2003), using Likert scale and contains 37 items of questionnaire that reflects 6 factor models that consists of a) Direct anger out, b) Assertion, c) Support-Seeking, d) Diffusion, e)

5 Avoidance, and Rumination. The participants select one out of four answer possibilities on each item: Never, Rarely, Often, and Always. Data Analysis. Analysis was conducted by using SPSS 17 for Windows release to see the correlation between anger and academic achievement. Conclusion and Discussion Based on 161 participants' responses (29 male and 132 female), the result indicates that students who have less anger response tend to have more improvement on their GPA as the semester moves on, and they who have more anger response tend to have decline on their GPA. They who have trend toward declining GPA tend to express anger in forms of assertiveness, anger out, social support seeking and rumination. They who have trend of inclining GPA tend to express anger in forms of avoidance and diffusion. Further analysis also indicates that females tend to be responsive on anger than males, and female students tend to use social support form anger. The correlation study also indicates that the older the students the lower the anger response; and the younger the students the higher the anger response. Cultural aspect may influence the result on this anger research. Indonesian society tends to educate the people to accept whether positive or negative life conditions by not expressing anger, for anger form of behavior is considered as reactive. Thus, the society tends to behave more passively in dealing with various kinds of life challenges. It is therefore suggested that we explore anger much further in relations to socio-cultural norms. High achievers participants tend to use avoidance response in dealing with anger since they may not have any other alternative to deal with the feelings. Some of them tend to rationalize the condition thus doing more cognitively in dealing with anger. The lower achiever participants tend to use assertion or using social support in order to gain support in anger, or in behaving destructively. Difference response on anger associated with gender may relate to the condition that female tends to be more responsive toward emotional turmoil in anger response, whereas males tend to rationalize the feeling thus tend to act more cognitively. Besides, parent s roles in educating their children influence the way the individual expresses anger. This research also obtains pictures that culture apparently has unique influence on anger expression, and cultural influence is transformed from parents to children. For example mothers have more influence on how children dealing with anger since mothers have more interactive time with children at home compare to fathers. However, we may need further study on influence on parent-child relationships on anger responses.

6 The older participants tend to show lower anger response compare to the younger ones, and this may relate to maturation. The more mature a person tend to have more experience in managing the emotion, thus having more ability to control the anger response. References Beck, R. C. (2004). Motivation: Theories and principles (5th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Boeree, C. G. (1998). Anger: A phenomenological sketch. Retrieved January 1, 2008 from Boman, P. (2003). Gender differences in school anger. International Education Journal, 4, Clore, G. L., & Centerbar, D. B. (2004). Analyzing anger: How to make people mad. Emotion, 4, Deckers, L. (2010). Motivation: Biological, psychological, and environmental (3rd ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Kerlinger, F.N. (1992). Foundation of behavioral research (3 rd ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Lebelle, L. (2000). Anger in our teens and in ourselves. Focus Adolescent Services. Retrieved December 27, 2007 from Linden, W., Hogan, B. E., Rutledge, T., Chawla, A., Lenz, J. W., & Leung, D. (2003). There is more to anger coping than in or out. Emotion, 3, Neuman, W. L. (2000). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (4 th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Pauls, C. A., & Stemmler, G. (2003). Repressive and defensive coping duing fear and anger. Emotion, 3, Rogelberg, S. G. (2007). Encyclopedia of industrial and organizational psychology. California: Sage Publications. Vol 2. Safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools notes (SDDFS). (2001). Florida: Florida Institute Of Education, The University Of North Florida. Vol. 4, 3. Spielberger, C. D., Johnson, E. H., Russell, S. F., & Crane, R. J. (1985). The expression and experience of anger: Construction and validation of an anger expression scale. (In M.Chesney & R. Rosenhan (Eds.), Anger and hostility in cardiovascular and behavioral disorder (pp. 5 30). New York: McGraw-Hill. Stiffler, K.L. (2008). Adolescents and anger: An investigation of variables that influence the expression of anger. A Dissertation for the Degree Doctor of Education. Pennsylvania: Indiana University.