If it seems to you that the world is awash in anger, you may be right.
Anger (and anxiety) are the emotions that we experience when we perceive a threat. For their own selfish purposes, conflict entrepreneurs are busy seeing to it that we see all sorts of 
threats, most of which are not actually real. But what is real is the benefit that conflict entrepreneurs get from riling us up.
Conflict entrepreneurs, or outrage pushers, know that outrage has great allure. It will probably surprise you to learn that science shows that outrage is as addictive as heroin. Outrage pushers, like drug pushers, get something valuable for getting us to be users.
- Influencers and social media companies get money for hits on click-bait online
- TV and internet newscasters get viewers (think ad money)
- Politicians get loyal followers (think power).
Pushers win. We lose. We get used. Let’s dig into this so we can protect ourselves from all this manipulation.
Peter Coleman, Ph.D., a leading social psychologist, cites research supporting the addictive power of outrage in his book The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. He notes that researchers have studied the way the brain responds when someone is outraged. They found that an area of the brain called the reward center reacts to outrage just as it does to other things that give us pleasure. It lights up our brains with a hit of the pleasure hormone dopamine.
Pleasure is one thing. But addiction? While pleasure doesn’t always lead to addiction, addiction always starts with pleasure.
The steps go something like this: First, we try something out – maybe smoke a cigarette, taste some beer, or take a hit of heroin. We trustingly take some oxycodone prescribed by our doctors for pain. Throw a fit to let off steam. The pleasure center lights up. “Ahh, I like that.”
We’re not addicted . . . yet. But the reward center trains us to repeat behaviors that give us pleasure. So . . .
We begin looking for opportunities to earn more dopamine.
On the pathway to potential addiction, we find that after a while the dopamine hit isn’t as strong, so we have to up the ante. Over time, it often takes a bigger “hit” to get the same level of pleasure. We crave more opportunities.
Addiction happens when a powerful loop of craving, reward, and reinforcement is created. And it’s hard to stop.
When craving leads people into addiction, they often behave in ways contrary to their values. A loving but alcoholic father may endanger his family by drinking in ways that damage his employability. It isn’t that he’s quit loving his family, though it looks like it. It is that he’s gotten hooked, and that supersedes everything. (To be clear, no one sets out to get hooked. It is an insidious process taken one small, almost imperceptible step at a time.)
Now let’s look at the pleasure of outrage. (It does seem like an odd term, doesn’t it? Bear with me.) As mentioned, the reward or pleasure center of our brain “lights up” when we are outraged, just as it does in response to a warm blanket, a good meal, or any other pleasure.
As evolution designed it originally, our brains would light up with pleasure when we did something smart, something that would increase our safety, and prolong our lives and the lives of our tribe members. Lighting up for eating made sense. If we didn’t eat, we didn’t live. But why would we light up for outrage?
Reflect on your own experience. We’ve all been outraged in our lives. Have you ever felt more confident or certain in your life than you did when you were morally outraged? The world in those moments never seemed clearer.
Compare that enthralling feeling of clarity to the distress that the actual complexity of life offers these days. There are shades of grey everywhere. There is more information than we can possibly process about almost any important subject. To feel the clarity that outrage provides is rewarding. It is a pleasure!
Then there is also relief. By providing (false) clarity, outrage reduces anxiety, something the brain really likes to do. Here’s why: Our brain’s fuel is glucose. Handling anxiety takes an inordinate share of the brain’s glucose. That creates a problem for the brain because it has all sorts of other things it needs fuel to do. It has a body to run, and an environment to keep watch over to avoid dangers. It has to figure out how to pay bills, to get a date for Saturday night, and so forth. The certainty that outrage brings is an effective antidote to anxiety. Glucose usage is reduced. Fuel problem solved.
Finally, a good fit of outrage can turn away an enemy. In cave-dwelling days we used moral outrage to banish someone dangerous from the tribe. (Out-rage!) In order to encourage outrage as a defense, the brain lights up, flooding our brains with pleasure hormones, leaving us feeling good, and giving us a taste for more.
But there are some major cons to outrage.
Remember that loving but alcoholic father? As is true for other forms of addiction, outrage leads people to behave in ways that are contrary to their values. Scroll through social media and “news sources.” You will find plenty of outrage. People use vile and disgusting language, full of judgment, that most would never use face to face. They make assumptions about others’ motives that have no basis in fact.
Sadly, with so much outrage now being modeled by conflict entrepreneurs who masquerade as leaders, outrage often does surface face to face, with potentially dangerous outcomes – 
shootings, fights, and even screaming matches in public forums that call for decorum. Last year, during a Senate hearing, a senator and a major union president threatened to beat each other up. “Stand your butt up!” Yelled one. “You stand your butt up!” yelled the other.
People resist giving up their addictions, even when those addictions are costing them. The same is true of outrage addiction.
Finally, there is always the danger that the enemy you are finding so much pleasure in being outraged at is not an enemy at all, but simply a boogeyman created to trap you into supporting a conflict entrepreneur’s cause. Coleman’s book shows that Republicans and Democrats believe horrible but totally false things about each other, fed by those who seek to manipulate us.
Our country seems to be addicted to outrage. What to do? As individuals, we can’t turn the country around. But we can do our part.
First, we need to avoid becoming seduced by our own capacity for outrage. Even if we can avoid addiction, the siren song of outrage can lure us into bad behavior.
Second, it can be helpful to consider how to respond to others’ outrage. Here are some ideas.
When you encounter an outraged person, you will be tempted to use logic, just as we were taught to do in school. You’ll think, “If they just knew the facts . . .” But here’s the hard truth. No one ever in the history of the world gave up an outrage in response to logic. We have to figure out a Plan B. Fortunately, there are possibilities that work at least some of the time.
Empathy: We can seek to understand what the other person is upset about. Important: empathy doesn’t mean we have to agree with the person. But our understanding, like music, 
“hath charms to soothe a savage breast.” When people are heard, they are soothed, their anxiety levels go down, and the need for that outrage-inspired pleasure hormone goes down as well. Now they are more likely to have the brain capacity to think in more complex ways.
Emotional Self-Awareness: First, don’t be so smug as to think that you haven’t been co-opted by outrage yourself. You just might be outraged by the opposite boogeymen. So first, be aware of that possibility, and admit that to yourself. With that awareness you immediately have something in common with this other “outrage-addicted” person. Now they may seem less like an enemy and more like a fellow victim.
Regardless, emotions are contagious. When we are with an outraged person, especially someone who is raging against things that we value, it is incredibly easy to become outraged ourselves. If that sounds like war to you, you understand the situation. When you notice yourself becoming outraged, take a breath and use . . .
Impulse Control: The payoff for Emotional Self-Awareness is that if you can notice the temptation to become outraged early enough, you can stop yourself from going there, from saying or doing something that feeds the fire. You can tolerate the emotional discomfort long enough for it to begin to wane. Your full intellectual capacity will become available.
Flexibility: Consider that within the outraged person’s opinion, there may be a kernel of truth. But it will take flexibility on your part to see it. If we rigidly stick to our own point of view, 
there will be no understanding. Thinking flexibly gives us a chance to understand the valuable part of the other person’s point of view. And there is a bonus. We tend to get what we give. If we give someone credit for their kernel of truth, they are more likely to return the favor, finding something of value in our point of view. Now we can have a discussion, not a shouting match, or worse, a war.
All of this said, the goal of the conversation is not to “win.” You won’t convince the other person to your way of thinking. The goal is mutual understanding and respect.
These and other Emotional Intelligence skills are what stand between us and civil war. Let’s give it a try.
Note: A Little Book to Save Humanity, and the associated brain training exercises, provide deeper context about this and related topics. https://theeqpress.com
