Explaining Behavior Through Introspection

In addition, self-awareness tends to bring internalized morals and standards to mind and increase their influence on behavior. The effectiveness of such self-awareness is demonstrated in a study by Berkowitz and Troccoli (1990). Participants were put through an uncomfortable physical activity or not. Half the participants in each of these conditions were then distracted with an irrelevant task, whereas the remaining participants were asked to attend to their inner feelings. Immediately afterward, all participants rated another student's personality. As you can see from FIGURE 12. In contrast, those participants prompted to attend to their emotional states did not verbally aggress, and even became more reluctant to say negative things about the target person (perhaps in an effort to be fair and correct for the possible distorting influence of their negative mood). Self-Awareness of Feelings and Aggression By that game, Brady was considered one of the greats. He had the fame, the money, the endorsement contracts, AND the supermodel girlfriend. This is where success would start to break most people's discipline. It takes an iron resolve, a real drive, to stay disciplined in the face of all this comfort and all these options. Since then, the Patriots have won another three Super Bowls with Brady leading the team. His success definitely didn't derail him and even in his 40's, he's at the top of his game. Always remember why you started this journey. Don't allow comfort to weaken your discipline. Until your goals are fulfilled and your plan is completed, there should only be a forward march on discipline. No slack whatsoever. They've heard it's healthy. But this misinformation alienates their spouse, employer and friends, and soon there is no one around to vent their anger upon.

Most people feel worse after venting anger; Others turn anger on themselves and begin to destroy their self-esteem, their identity and their capabilities. Anger becomes a problem when it takes the form of two extremes: overreaction or underreaction. When we underreact, we repress or suppress our anger, often without realizing what we're doing. When we choose to block it out, we are not being honest with ourselves or those around us. When we overreact, our anger is out of control. It comes out in rage and fury, which can lead to violence. I have seen the dark blue bruises on a face or the wince when someone touches the injured area of a person's body. If people focus their awareness on their feelings, they are less likely to view others negatively. This is one promising avenue toward reducing aggression. The image shows a line graph to represent number of bad traits attributed for distracted and feelings attention during times when subjects felt unpleasantness. The coordinate points plotted for number of bad traits attributed for distracted are (1. The coordinate points plotted for number of bad traits attributed for feelings attention are (1. Increase self-regulatory strength. If we can improve people's self-regulatory abilities, they will be better able to control their aggressive impulses. This can be facilitated by minimizing obstacles to self-awareness and self-control, such as alcohol use, environmental stressors such as noise, and conditions that foster deindividuation (described in article 9). People can also be encouraged to practice controlling their behavior. In one study (Finkel et al. Charting Your Progress As you walk the self-developmental path, those lists of goals and multi-step plans are important for charting your progress.

Working through a plan step by step means you can always see exactly where you're at. It's a good idea to keep a separate checklist that lists the steps of ALL your plans, no matter which area of life it's about. This is like a master list for you to refer to. When you complete a step, check it off. The aim is to gradually clear the entire list, but clearing it completely would mean that you're stagnating and not pushing as hard as you can - not being as disciplined as you should. When your list begins to near completion in even one area, it's time to update the list. You have to be setting and updating goals regularly to grow as a person. Even if you're striving to be number one in your field and are coming close, there's always more to do. But that pain is minor compared to the inner emotional pain. Skin bruises eventually turn back to their normal color, but the inner discoloration lasts much longer. The Truth About Anger Let's explore some truths about anger. Hold on, because what I'm going to say may sound contrary to what you have believed about this emotion. Anger is not the problem or the main emotion; Expressing your anger to your partner does not lessen your anger; How you use your anger is a learned response. This means that you can learn a new response and get your anger under control. Your partner is not responsible for making you angry--you are! Teach how to minimize hostile attributions. Hudley and Graham (1993) developed a 12-week program designed to prevent aggressive children from lashing out by reducing their tendency to attribute hostile intent to others.

Through games, role-play exercises, and brainstorming sessions, they taught children about the basic concepts of intention in interpersonal interactions and helped them to decide when someone's actions (eg, spilling milk on them in the lunchroom) are deliberate or accidental. Compared with boys who went through an equally intensive program that did not focus on attributions of intent, boys who received the attribution training were less likely to presume that their peers' actions (real and imagined) were hostile in intent, they were less likely to engage in verbally hostile behaviors, and they were rated as less aggressive by their teachers. Improve people's sense of self-worth and significance. When people have high, stable self-esteem, they respond to threats with lower levels of hostility and anger (eg, Kernis et al. One source for such a foundation is a stable, secure attachment with a close other. Indeed, studies show that, among troubled and delinquent adolescents undergoing residential treatment programs, those who formed secure attachment bonds with staff members exhibited less aggressive and antisocial behavior (Born et al. As Pegues (2016, p. More broadly, a society that provides a wide range of attainable ways of developing and maintaining self-esteem should foster less aggressive people. Even for the greatest there has ever been, there is still room for improvement. The point is to be the best you can be, not the best compared to everyone else. The greatest of all time is a mantle that can be passed on in the future, so if somebody were to earn it, they should make the gap as big as possible and try to hold on to it. Knowing you've been the best you can be is what discipline is about. People who fail but know they gave their all are able to rest much easier than those who succeeded but believe they could have done better. Even in the early days when you're creating your plans and goals, you should be ambitious. It's good to have a bigger overall goal in place, then work back from that. If the big goal looks in sight, immediately start thinking about bigger and better ones. Aiming for something that is too close will dull enthusiasm and dampen your drive. Big goals give big inspiration, and they give you the best reason to stay disciplined and productive. How do you feel after reading these statements? Let's consider what you've just read.

Remember: What you do with the information in this article can have a dramatic affect on the amount of harmony and satisfaction you experience in your marriage. Anger's Root Causes Anger is what we call a secondary emotion. It is a message system that tells you something else is happening inside you. Anger is caused by fear, hurt or frustration. That's right--fear, hurt or frustration. You may be afraid that your partner is going to override you, control you, yell at you, be unreasonable, not give you what you want, verbally attack you, withdraw, ignore you, and so on. To protect yourself from your fear, you attack with anger. SECTION REVIEW Reducing Aggression Aggression has many causes, so there is no single, easy way to reduce its prevalence. However, some approaches do inspire hope. Societal Interventions Large-scale efforts to: Interpersonal Approaches Improve parental care. Strengthen social connections. Promote empathy. Individual Approaches Internal Focus Versus External Focus The people we talked about, like Tom Brady and Cristiano Ronaldo, are prime examples of people with an internal focus.