You are chatting with a coworker about a work-related topic in the cafeteria. You have been engaged in conversation for a little while, and you notice they are contributing less and less to the conversation and are starting to frown. You keep on talking, assuming they are focusing hard on the many very useful points you are raising, and so you also focus more and get more intense about the subject at hand. You look away as you pause to breathe, and when you look back at them you notice their breathing has become more pronounced and rapid, and their skin looks like it is getting hot. Additionally, they now are wearing a very pronounced and set frown. Their nostrils are flaring, and they have an intense glare in their eyes, which are also narrowing slightly, as are their lips, and their mouth is held a little tightly shut. You suddenly catch on. Uh-oh, they are looking pretty angry. What did I do? I must have said something to really upset them. I’d better watch out—they look like they’re gonna blow!
IT IS UNSETTLING to say the least to unintentionally upset someone to the point where they may explode in rage. Is your coworker going to blow? If so, this could happen very quickly, but you can still SCAN the situation by suspending judgment and being more descriptive of what is going on.
The key signals in our scenario are the frowning, rapid breathing, glaring eyes, narrowing of the lips and appearance of being hot; so let’s unpack where the power of these gestures lies. Frowning, as we note elsewhere in the book, or the eyebrows pulled inward and downward, can indeed be a sign of thinking deeply, but if accompanied by other anger-related signs can certainly point to anger. The rapid breathing is a result of the body’s systemic reaction to potential physical conflict, to fight: Our adrenal glands push adrenaline and cortisol through our systems, which causes our blood pressure, breathing, heart rate and temperature to increase—and, voilà, your coworker appears to be hot. The nostrils flare to accommodate increased oxygen flow. The skin tone may also turn red (perhaps more obvious in lighter skin tones). Also, the pupils will dilate, the eyelids will narrow to protect the eyes, and the gaze will become targeted, all of which you may be seeing in those glaring eyes. The narrowing of the lips is a strong signal of the building anger but also of further escalations being suppressed. Though your coworker may be intensely angry, they have not yet exploded. They have not moved into any physical action in order to alter the environment, to jump into the conflict and resolve it; in anticipation of that, they are keeping their mouth shut tight.
BODY LANGUAGE MYTHBUSTER
Seeing Red Is Only a Metaphor
Some people really do see red when they are angry. A study at North Dakota State University found that people who display signs of aggression and hostility are more likely to choose the color red when presented concurrently with a choice of colors.1
Anthropologists have documented the association between anger and aggression and the color red, finding this association is shared across all cultures.
Evolutionary psychologists theorize that the connection may stem from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who linked the color with danger—when searching for food they would have been on the lookout to avoid poisonous plants, dangerous insects and other potential threats.
A study by researchers at Rochester University found that the association of the color red with danger might still have a positive effect: It could make us respond faster and more powerfully. Our brains are programmed to tell our bodies to flee when faced with someone turning red with anger, meaning we get a huge energy burst. Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology at Rochester, observes: “Red enhances our physical reactions because it is seen as a danger cue. Humans flush when they are angry or preparing for attack. People are acutely aware of such reddening in others and its implications.”2
All signals considered, there is little doubt that your coworker is remarkably angry. But you assume they’re going to lose it, freak out, explode with rage. What happens to behavior when the lid blows off the anger and they let it all out in a rageful fit? Rage is an extreme exacerbation of angry feelings that turn into rageful behavior, looking like an uncontrollable physical display of anger and frustration: Faces uncontrollably distort with rage; we fly into a fit of rage; we jump up and down with rage; or we rage at others—the word’s use as a verb showing the active behavioral quality of rage as opposed to the more held-in feeling of anger. Rage can be a reaction to a threat and is sometimes associated with the fight or flight response. In addition to the anger signs we have already discussed, if someone is about to act out in rage, they may well be clenching their fists in order to protect the fingers and create a more impactful tool of aggression with the hands. Also, you may see them getting more grounded and stable in the lower part of the body (lowering their center of gravity) in preparing for fight.
Are they glaring at you? Are you the target of their growing anger and hostility? Regardless of whether it was something you said, or the way you said it, or the situation, if they are targeting you, you are in their firing line and will need a course of action.
But what if they are not targeting you with that glare, but someone else? Regarding the context, is there anyone else or any situation in the room that may be causing your coworker’s negative reaction? Has the environment changed since you started chatting together, has anyone new entered the room or has something got to them more than to you, a disturbance, something disruptive, others arguing or behaving rudely in the communal space? Their growing anger may relate to the goings-on within the context of the room and have nothing to do with you at all.
Canine Calm
Some people find it calming to have pets at work. The Google code of conduct states that “affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture.” And at Amazon, around 2,000 employees have registered their pets at its headquarters in Seattle so they can take them into work with them. Having a dog at work can create an atmosphere that feels warmer and more sociable. If someone’s feeling a bit down in the dumps or stressed out, they can spend some time with the dog. And having a dog to walk can give workers a reason to get outside for a break and some fresh air. But scientists believe the major source of people’s positive reactions to pets comes from oxytocin, a hormone whose many functions include easing stress and stimulating social bonding, relaxation and trust. Often when humans and dogs interact, oxytocin levels increase in both species. Just as with human-to-human contact, stroking the body with the hands, eye contact and simple play have much to do with this effect. All of which, if done human to human in most workplaces, would likely and rightly mean a trip to HR, warnings or instant dismissal. Nonetheless, all these interactions can help slow the heart rate and decrease anxiety and anger arousal levels.
Whether it is you or the behavior of others that is the catalyst for your coworker’s potential outburst, examining the context further should shed some light on how likely they are to erupt. You are at your workplace in the cafeteria. Most places of business, regardless of industry, will likely and to varying degrees have implicit or written codes of conduct—rules and regulations that may completely prohibit violent or aggressive physical or vocal outbursts. So it is highly likely to be taboo for anybody to erupt in a rage. So, in seeing your coworker suppress their anger, you may be witnessing their better judgment kicking in. That said, within the organization specifically you are in the cafeteria, a context within the context. You need to think quickly: Are there precedents or social norms whereby the cafeteria itself is a zone where employees are free to storm around, blow off steam, smash it up and let it all out? It may be that in this particular part or room of the work environment, it is considered by the group socially acceptable or even normal to express rage. Is the cafeteria the place people can regularly go to have a temper tantrum? If so, maybe your workmate will be feeling free or even empowered to act out and you will see the volcano blow at any second. But if the space is not considered anger-management HQ, you could lay a good bet that the power of social norms at your organization will restrain them from an explosive emotional display. In many if not all workplaces, there is a massive risk of expulsion from the organization in fully raging out within any part of the work environment and thus causing coworkers to experience fear, threat and possibly long-term trauma.
However, for some people, keeping the lid on such extreme feelings may translate into pain of a psychological or physical nature: Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as cardiac stress and hypertension, are linked to, among other causes, repressed rage. Your coworker may be in this moment weighing up the risk of not lashing out and expressing their rage versus the risk of so doing and the likely social, professional and legal consequences.
Ask what else you need to consider. Can they or can they not control their impulses? Many people suffer from a serious lack of impulse control, in some cases pathologically. There are many well-documented anger disorders; one example that is directly related to impulse control is intermittent explosive disorder (IED), where the sufferer cannot resist aggressive impulses even when they involve serious attacks on people or property.3 Forensic psychologist Stephen A. Diamond, an author in the subject area of anger disorders, describes these more generally as “pathologically aggressive, violent or self-destructive behaviors symptomatic of and driven by an underlying and chronically repressed anger or rage.”4 These incidences of rage outbursts can be habitual but can also appear as if out of nowhere. In both cases, they are often triggered by an insult, rejection or stressful event that has let loose the deeply repressed intense feelings of anger within the individual.
In our scenario, if you have a history of working with this person, and this behavior is something new, there is a good likelihood they will be able to check in with norms of social boundaries in this situation and keep a lid on it. However, if they have displayed rageful behavior before, then they are likely to display this behavior again. Whatever the cause of their rage, unlike with throwing the dice, where rolling a one means you now have statistically less of a chance of rolling a one again even though the probability remains the same, with behavior, if someone has done it before, even if it ended badly for them the first time, they are still likely to engage in the same behavior again. As we often say, in behavior, once is a pattern.
So your new judgment may be that although your coworker looks like they are about to boil over, they may be unlikely to engage in this behavior in the workplace.
But how much would you like to test this? What’s the cost if your new assumption tests false? Can you recover from a test that is positive for rage? You could throw caution to the wind and poke the bear a little more if you like, or . . . stop talking. Take a breather. Give them some time and space, and make sure your breathing is calm. They may pick up on a calm breathing rhythm, which may in turn take the edge off their anger. And after everything has subsided (take a few hours or even a few days), you may want to talk about what made them angry—or you may not.
RUDE HUMANS
If you do keep dogs at work, be sure you are maintaining a low-stress environment for your canine friend. Take account of how our longtime friend, dog behavior expert VICTORIA STILWELL, imagines the experience of being a pet as told from the dog’s point of view:
Humans are notorious for being rude, confusing and inconsistent. They also have really high expectations that they themselves can’t follow. They expect you to come preprogrammed to sit, stay and come back to them when told, even if they’re calling you to come back when you are having the best fun—playing with other dogs or chasing small fluffies. When you don’t respond, they get mad and tell you how bad you are. Apparently they don’t understand that dogs also say, “Just a minute.”
People are also really bad about invading space. Even if they don’t know you, they come up and touch you. They think they’re being friendly, and most of them are, but it’s weird when a complete stranger comes close, bends over, stares at you, shows their teeth and extends their big paw to pat you on top of your head. Then when you show them your teeth, they back away and get angry and upset that you weren’t nice to them. Just be aware that when they approach you like that, they are trying to be kind.
And the hugging! Why do they have to hug so much? Apparently hugging in human language is an expression of affection, but what humans don’t understand is that hugging means different things in dog language. We put our front legs around something only when we are about to fight, and I’m sure if people knew that, they would stop hugging us really quickly. We sometimes enjoy hugs from people we know really well, though, but only if we like being that close.
QUICK SCAN
S: Seeing someone show physical signs of extreme anger in the workplace may look and prove to be scary. At what point is it not safe enough to suspend judgment? Think of how you might describe to a friend, date, partner or colleague the process of suspending judgment and being more descriptive.
C: Are there contexts in your workplace considered safe zones to blow off steam?
A: Ask whether this person has any history of erratic behavior or violence.
N: They may be able to control their emotion, but with this new judgment, give them and yourself a breather and leave them to collect themselves.