Why Are Americans So Angry?

By Howard Bloom

Anger is on the rise in 2024. Ask ChatGPT or the search engine for scientific studies, Consensus, and they will feed you great gobs of information showing that anger in America is reaching record highs.

What’s more, they will tell you that much of the anger scientists have studied recently is based on politics. Republicans are furious at Democrats and Democrats are enraged by Republicans.

But when it comes to anger, politics is not the whole story. Road rage is up. And domestic violence is on the rise.

Why this record increase of anger? It has two causes. Frustration. And status.

In the late 1930s five researchers at Yale came up with the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Run a lab rat down a bowling-alley-like straight maze and give it food when it gets to the end. Do that over and over until the rat is certain it will get the treat. In other words, create a baseline of expectation.

Then put an electrified grid in front of the food, and what happens? The rat runs down the maze expecting a treat, but when it’s almost at its snack, its feet are zapped. Painfully. How does the rat…