The effects of subconscious processing of anger-related words and physiological arousal on the emotion of anger and aggressive behavior.

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of the prior subconscious processing of anger-related words and physiological arousal upon anger and aggressive behavior in a frustrated person. Sixteen male and 24 female college students participated in the experiment. First, the subjects performed a cognitive task in which they processed anger-related words or neutral words subconsciously in the high arousal or normal arousal state. In the second ostensibly unrelated task, the subjects were presented with a frustration story and they were asked to rate the intensity of anger which the victim in the story would feel, the victim's responses, and impressions of the frustrator, on several SD-trait scales. It was found that the subjects who processed anger-related words in high arousal state rated the victim as being in the most intense anger and aggressive in behavior and reported the impression of the frustrator as most negative. These findings were interpreted in terms of the network model of emotion.