Walk away when angry; treat the other person as weather, not an enemy

17. Walk away when angry; treat the other person as weather, not an enemy

Cost: No cost at all. You must resist the urge to retort on the spot, turn around and leave, then decide later whether to address the situation. This takes some practice.

In plain terms: Reframing what just happened or trying to see things from the other person’s perspective can genuinely lower emotional intensity; the latter approach works especially well. Simply suppressing emotions has no effect. Additionally, people who punish those who offend them end up dwelling on the incident far longer afterward; those who do not retaliate move on more quickly. People also tend to overestimate how satisfying revenge actually is.

Benefit: A meta-analysis combining 306 separate experiments shows that reframing events (cognitive reappraisal) yields a moderate effect size of d = 0.36 on emotional intensity. Viewing things from the other person’s perspective produces an even stronger effect, d = 0.45. Distraction yields d = 0.27. Simply suppressing emotions has virtually no effect, with d = -0.04. Three other experiments likewise reveal that people who punish offenders keep thinking about them far longer; those who refrain from retaliation move on more quickly. People consistently overestimate how gratifying revenge truly is.

Evidence grade: B

Sources: Webb TL, Miles E, Sheeran P (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin. <https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027600>; Carlsmith KM, Wilson TD, Gilbert DT (2008). The paradoxical consequences of revenge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. <https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012165>

Notes: The portion of this analysis dealing with emotional intensity — not energy expenditure — shows effects ranging from small to moderate. Because only one experiment addresses the issue of revenge, the overall grade is B. The “empty boat” parable originates from Zhuangzi’s “Mountain Trees”: one remains calm when an empty boat bumps into them, but becomes angry when a boat carrying people does the same; the impact is identical in both cases. This is purely an analogy, not empirical evidence. If actual harm has occurred, following the legal procedures outlined in Sections 8 and 9 is far less costly than reacting impulsively on the spot.