# How we learn anger from modelling and culture

- **Episode:** [163](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/163.md) (2025-01-16)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** anger, modeling, culture
- **Time:** 14:04–20:47 (start 844s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/163?t=844](https://truthliesandwork.com/163?t=844)

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[14:04] Leanne Elliott: You mentioned the modeling of behaviors, and I wonder whether that's something people might associate more in terms of like children or childhood, or I mean, what role does behavior modeling play in adult life?
[14:17] Al Elliott: Yeah, that's a great question. And so I think what we see is a couple different things. So when you think about emotional development, I'm going to take the question, but I'm going to back it way up and talk about development quickly. So when you think about emotional development, there's something that happens that we refer to as display rules. And these are basically a culture's sort of rules for how we should display particular emotions
[14:43] Leanne Elliott: Right
[14:43] Al Elliott: So this is where a lot of that, the culture elements get built in that suggest things like, well, men shouldn't cry, right? That's something women do, et cetera. These are the rules that we get. We learn those rules early on when we're young, and then they continue through much of our life, but they don't go away. We continue to get these messages and our behavior continues to shift Over time based on sort of the messages we get from anything from maybe it's a romantic partner, we're in a new relationship now and not with our caregivers, and that relationship has sort of norms around how emotions can or can't be expressed. The other element here that's connected to modeling is what we call emotional contagion. And what it means is that we tend to pick up the emotions of those people around us. So if people around me are angry, I see that and I think there might be something I should be angry about. And so I'm more likely to get angry in that context. And this actually serves— all of these things serve an evolutionary purpose, that emotions exist to kind of ready us for a challenge. And so it's good for me to feel what the people around me are feeling. Because if they're mad, maybe I should be mad. If they're scared, maybe there's a threat that I should be scared of. So that's how we sort of pick up these feelings from our surroundings and how a version of modeling can really play a role in our adult life
[16:33] Al Elliott: We actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work
[16:51] Leanne Elliott: It's brought to you—
[16:52] Al Elliott: we need to do this in threes— the HubSpot Podcast Network
[16:54] Leanne Elliott: The audio destination for business professionals
[17:35] Al Elliott: It can
[17:43] Leanne Elliott: But come back
[17:44] Al Elliott: Yeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back
[17:47] Leanne Elliott: I'll cut that out. You mentioned there when you're talking about anger that it's— and I'll try, I'll try and remember this correctly— but anger is, is either being treated unfairly, a sense of injustice, or goal blocking. Is there one of those 3 that is more likely, more frequent, more associated with aggression, is a bigger problem than the others?
[18:13] Al Elliott: I don't know that there is necessarily one of those that's going to be worse than than the other so much as it's probably individual dependent, right? So there are gonna be some people who, for whom, you know, injustice is a real hot button trigger, right? So I have 2 sons, you know, one is older than the other one. The younger one has a pretty hot sort of button for injustice, right? And this is in some ways the result of being the youngest and looking and feeling like, well, this isn't fair, right? This isn't, why does he get to do things I don't get to do? And that's a relatively common phenomenon. I say this also as the youngest, right? So those particular triggers can be important for specific people. I think, like, there are people who— because it's going to be tied to other personality characteristics as well. So I tend to be relatively Type A, right? I'm competitive. I like to be productive. I value sort of efficiency and things like that
[19:17] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[19:17] Al Elliott: That I try to work through those things. For me, goal blocking is a particular trigger, right? Because whatever that thing is, is standing in the way of me trying to be all those things, right? If I try and print something out and the printer stops working, that's really frustrating because this is a thing that's supposed to just work and now it's interfering in my goals. And so I think that's where those Those individual differences come into play. Now, the other thing I would say too, though, is I present those in the book. I present them as sort of 3 separate things, but ultimately those 3 things overlap considerably, right? They aren't really distinct. Poor treatment is often tied to injustice. Goal blocking is oftentimes tied to poor treatment, right? Someone standing in your way intentionally is doing both. So these things, even though, yeah, I talk about them separately, they oftentimes go together
[20:14] Leanne Elliott: It was a real breakthrough for me when I was— when I was in terms of goal blocking, because Al, my, my co-host and my husband, the printer not working infuriates him. He will throw things across the room. And I'm the youngest. I'm more— yeah, it's just, it's so interesting when you start to see those patterns in the people around you. I mean, with that in mind, is that what I really liked about your books is it's It's kind of peppered with different facts and different tips. Is there perhaps some facts that you think will surprise people about anger?