{"id":3610,"date":"2022-11-08T14:57:34","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/?p=3610"},"modified":"2022-11-08T14:57:34","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:57:34","slug":"the-virology-of-authentic-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2022\/11\/08\/the-virology-of-authentic-anger\/","title":{"rendered":"THE VIROLOGY OF AUTHENTIC ANGER"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I sat down to write, I tried to remember the angriest person I ever saw.\u00a0 Before you keep reading, think about it with me for a second.\u00a0 I kept recalling viral videos of people in public places screaming at other people for no discernably good reason.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever seen one of these viral videos, then you know how they are all somehow memorable as well as forgettable.\u00a0 The anger from the person in the video is always disproportionately overblown.\u00a0 Nobody should get that angry about their coffee, their French fries, or some other perceived slight in the service industry.\u00a0 We know it when we see it and we recognize it immediately.\u00a0 Then our judgment engine turns on\u2014or maybe it\u2019s just mine.\u00a0 And isn\u2019t the first judgment we make one about credibility?\u00a0 Credible anger fits the situation, but these kind of situational fits aren\u2019t credible. And what is the result of seeing this display of anger?\u00a0 Well, I can\u2019t think of a time I ever took the side of the fit-thrower.\u00a0 But what happens if we see anger that matches the context?\u00a0 Anger that is real and isn\u2019t overcooked? Could an angry lawyer lead us to her chosen verdict, even if it\u2019s true of us all that we don\u2019t usually seek out<\/em> angry people to follow?<\/p>\n

This is the question that a study with mock jurors sought to answer.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 It won\u2019t be spoiling the end from the beginning to say that most of the results here won\u2019t surprise you.\u00a0 Terrible things have been done in the world and continue to be done because of the persuasive power of angry people.\u00a0 However, there is still some nuance to explore here and a surprise or two to uncover.\u00a0 Rather than flesh out the laundry lists of methods the researchers employed, I think it would be more fruitful for our uses to talk about the theories of emotion and persuasion that undergird the study.\u00a0 I will follow that with a list of some of the study\u2019s conclusions.\u00a0 The two principal theories are that emotions can influence behavior through two mechanisms.\u00a0 The first is called \u201cemotional contagion\u201d and the second is called \u201csocial information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEmotional contagion refers to how one person could \u2018catch\u2019 another\u2019s emotions through mimicry and feedback.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 The authors point out how much of human behavior is often mimicry and emotional contagion is yet another form of our tendency to mimic others.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Mimicry helps us understand others and their emotions as our brains process our own mirrored responses.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 But mimicry isn\u2019t just an automatic response to emotion.\u00a0 The chief barrier to emotional contagion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the sterile mask of inauthenticity.\u00a0 We don\u2019t tend to mimic inauthentic emotion.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 And don\u2019t you just love that we intuitively seem to \u201cknow\u201d the difference and our mimicry engine shuts off in the presence of the inauthentic?<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial information refers to how an individual makes inferences about another person\u2019s thoughts, feelings and intentions based on emotions.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 So, suggest the authors, where someone is perceived as emotionally tough during a negotiation it would mean that one might infer that person is less likely to make concessions and more likely to present high demands.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 From this phenomenon, the authors surmised that an inauthentic expression of anger would cause jurors to use this social information to conclude the attorney shouldn\u2019t be trusted.\u00a0 Conversely, where the attorney\u2019s anger was authentic, jurors might use the emotional information to reach some sort of positive conclusion about the attorney\u2014such as inferring the depth of the attorney\u2019s own convictions or even believing the attorney to be more competent.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

Now to the real questions here:\u00a0 Would authentic anger catch on from a prosecutor to the jurors and what would inauthentic anger produce?\u00a0 Would the social information of authentic anger and inauthentic anger create the right sort of inferences in the jurors?\u00a0 First, jurors tended to become angrier where the prosecutor\u2019s anger was authentic, and this meant that the odds of a guilty verdict were 249% greater where jurors experienced an attorney\u2019s authentic anger over a display of inauthentic anger.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Additionally, a juror\u2019s awareness of an attorney\u2019s authentic anger tended to positively affect the juror\u2019s confidence in their guilty verdict.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 The authors also found that a juror\u2019s perception of authentic anger positively affected the juror\u2019s opinion on the attorney\u2019s competence.\u00a0 The authors then correlated that conclusion of competence to the increased odds of producing a guilty verdict.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Perhaps none of those seem too outside of the ballpark.\u00a0 Let\u2019s finish with a few surprises.\u00a0 First, the authors found that inauthentically angry prosecutors were not <\/em><\/strong>trusted less than the control group of prosecutors who expressed no emotion, suggesting that being emotionless was about the same as being fake.[12]<\/a> Second, the authors said that there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to conclude that inauthentic displays of anger backfired<\/em> on the prosecutors.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026mock jurors who knew about the prosecutor\u2019s fake anger did not trust this prosecutor any less than the prosecutor who was [either] genuinely angry or not angry.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 I would have bet money that it would have killed trust!\u00a0 Finally, the authors \u201cfound that perceptions of the prosecutor\u2019s competence mattered more than [a juror\u2019s own] anger in guiding mock juror verdict[s].\u201d[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Maybe that last one is not that much of a surprise.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the prosecutors in our midst are pumping their collective fists and the defense lawyers among us are pondering what their own emotional volleys should be.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know that we need to put tremendous stock in these findings such that it changes the regular process of trial preparation and execution. \u00a0There are, nevertheless, some interesting thoughts to chew on.\u00a0 For me, I might just use this as a conversational springboard with one\u2019s co-counsel or class on the dual nature of anger: Its power of attraction and its capacity for destruction.\u00a0 Beacon or blaze.\u00a0 And doesn\u2019t a trial lawyer have to both leverage anger and quench it, all in a day\u2019s work?\u00a0 This practical and philosophical question is one I hope we are spurred on to discussing with our colleagues and classes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Samuel Choi et al., The influence of attorney anger on juror decision making<\/em>, 0 Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, no. 0, 2022, at 1-28, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/13218719.2021.2006099<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Id <\/em>at 4.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> See, Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 5.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 12, 14.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 15.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 16.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 17<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 20.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I sat down to write, I tried to remember the angriest person I ever saw.\u00a0 Before you keep reading, think about it with me for a second.\u00a0 I kept recalling viral videos of people in public places screaming at other people for no discernably good reason.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever seen one of these viral<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[203],"class_list":["post-3610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-lessons"],"yoast_head":"\nTHE VIROLOGY OF AUTHENTIC ANGER - Advocacy and Evidence Resources<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2022\/11\/08\/the-virology-of-authentic-anger\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"THE VIROLOGY OF AUTHENTIC ANGER - 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