Assignment - Case Study
Assignment - Case Study
OVERVIEW
People have different ways of improving their mood when angry. We have all seen people punch
a wall when mad, and indeed, previous research has indicated that some people aggress to
improve their mood (Bushman, Baumeister & Phillips, 2001). What do the top athletes do when
angry? Striegel (1994) found that anger often hurts an athlete’s performance and that capability
to control anger is what makes good athletes even better. This study adds to the past research
and examines the difference in ways to improve an angry mood by gender and sports
participation.
The participants were 78 Rice University undergraduates, ages 17 to 23. Of these 78 participants,
48 were females, 30 were males, 25 were athletes, and 53 were non-athletes. People who did not
play a varsity or club sport were considered non-athletes. The 13 contact sport athletes played
soccer, football, rugby, or basketball, and the 12 non-contact sport athletes participated in
Ultimate Frisbee, baseball, tennis, swimming, volleyball, crew, or dance.
The participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire that asked about what they do to
improve their mood when angry or furious. Then they filled out a demographics questionnaire.
DESCRIPTIONS OF VARIABLES
Variable Description
Sports 1 = athletes, 2 = non-athletes
Gender 1 = males, 2 = females
high scores demonstrate that people deal with anger by expressing it in a
Anger-Out (AO)
verbally or physically aggressive fashion
Anger-In high scores demonstrate that people experience anger but do not express it
(AI) (suppress their anger)
high scores demonstrate that people control the outward expression of angry
Control-Out (CO)
feelings
high scores demonstrate that people control angry feelings by calming down
Control-In (CI)
or cooling off
index of general anger expression:
Expression (AE)
(Anger-Out) + (Anger-In) - (Control-Out) - (Control-In) + 48