Stop anger with calm activities
Anew study has suggested that the key to reducing feelings of anger is not venting (letting the angry emotions out) but doing calming activities such as yoga or meditation.
The study was published in March by Sophie Kjaervik and Brad Bushman from Ohio State University in the US. They wanted to explore the popular theory that venting (expressing) anger is a good way of getting rid of it. Examples of venting anger include yelling or hitting something like a cushion, so that you release the emotion and therefore don’t feel it any more. The pair looked at 154 other studies on anger. These involved 10,189 people, and included a variety of ages and backgrounds. In their study, Kjaervik and Bushman define anger as “an emotional response to a real or imagined threat”. They used a theory of emotion (see panel) that says emotions are partly felt in your body and partly in your mind.
The scientists looked at the other studies to see how different activities affected anger. They found that activities such as running or boxing – which are often thought to be good for dealing with anger – weren’t very good at reducing it. In fact, some of these activities actually made it worse because they boosted physical responses in the body that are linked to feeling angry. For example, they made people’s hearts beat faster. However, activities that decreased physical responses in the body did help to reduce feelings of anger. These included activities that slow the heart rate, such as deep breathing, meditation and yoga. Bushman says activities that increase physical responses may be good for heart health but are “definitely not the best way to reduce anger”.
The team found jogging was most likely to increase anger. However, some heart-rate increasing activities – like ball games and team sports – could reduce anger. They think this shows that fun or playful activities help to reduce negative feelings.
Aresearcher has launched an online tool that is designed to stop an ancient Greek dialect, called Romeyka, from going extinct. A dialect is a form of language that is linked to an area.
Romeyka is mainly spoken in a few remote mountain villages in northeastern Turkey, near Trabzon on the Black Sea. It is described as a “living bridge” to the ancient world. That’s because it’s more similar to ancient Greek – which was spoken 2,000 years ago – than the Greek people speak today. However, Romeyka is at risk of dying out. Very few people speak it, most are over 65 years old and it has no written form, so it is hard to study and not many young people are learning it.
Professor Ioanna Sitaridou from Cambridge University is aiming to preserve Romeyka by gathering recordings of lots of people speaking it. Her project uses an online tool that Romeyka speakers anywhere in the world can use to record themselves speaking. The tool then writes what they say in English. Sitaridou calls it the “last chance” to preserve Romeyka.