Venting doesn’t work

I'm glad it helped your grieving process, and a big yes to the reality of "this is hard to study".

I have an intuition that catharsis as part of a grief process might be quite different (more useful) than in situations where the anger arises out of other circumstances.

Can't help but think the term "toxic," discredits the whole thing as a vehicle for something else. Aggression is natural and universal, but the tools for expressing and self-regulating it are not. One description of it that resonated personally for me was Robert Sapolsky's "depression is aggression turned inward," and while the phrase doesn't do the whole idea justice, it's more useful than hollow and seductive cliches like toxicity.

Arguably, aggression is necessarily an artifact of ideas of self and how we relate to others, and "venting" aggression safely lets you accept it (and yourself) in its totality and gives you a sense of how to manage it, instead of suppressing it and fearing that it will be exposed, only to have it come out in perverse other ways anyway. What bothers me about a lot of psychology is it seems mainly like a critical theory for deconstructing mental suffering as a means to relieve it theraputically - which is noble and useful, but it has been adopted as a scheme for moralizing coarse political interests.

Some years ago I turned a lot of my aggression outward and into disagreeableness, replacing a few intense relationships that enabled turning it inward with many new ones that did not, and it has made me more likeable, honest, trustworthy, reliable, fairer, and more sincerely compassionate, and as a result I have never been more content. It sets a healthy boundary where your natural aggression doesn't get triggered nearly as often, and you can manage it in other ways. Yes, some people will think you are an asshole, but the little bit of friction and occasional loss of a connection does not compare to relief and peace of just not caring what they think, and being free to engage people for only the enjoyment of it instead of some absurd sense of obligation. Or not.

From Robert Sapolsky's Behave, I learnt about the notion of "displacement aggression". We know what it is intuitively, but in short: depressingly enough, the reason stress encourages aggression is that it reduces stress. And we don't yet know the underlying biology of it.

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Excuse the wall of text, but it's entirely worth reading Sapolsky's description of this:

[quote]

Shock a rat and its glucocorticoid levels [a key stress-signaller] and blood pressure rise; with enough shocks, it’s at risk for a “stress” ulcer. Various things can buffer the rat during shocks—running on a running wheel, eating, gnawing on wood in frustration. But a particularly effective buffer is for the rat to bite another rat. Stress-induced (aka frustration-induced) displacement aggression is ubiquitous in various species.

Among baboons, for example, nearly half of aggression is this type—a high-ranking male loses a fight and chases a subadult male, who promptly bites a female, who then lunges at an infant. My research shows that within the same dominance rank, the more a baboon tends to displace aggression after losing a fight, the lower his glucocorticoid levels.

Humans excel at stress-induced displacement aggression—consider how economic downturns increase rates of spousal and child abuse. Or consider a study of family violence and pro football. If the local team unexpectedly loses, spousal/partner violence by men increases 10 percent soon afterward (with no increase when the team won or was expected to lose). [...]

Little is known concerning the neurobiology of displacement aggression blunting the stress response. I’d guess that lashing out activates dopaminergic reward pathways, a surefire way to inhibit CRH release [a hormone involved in the stress response]. Far too often, giving an ulcer helps avoid getting one.

[/quote]

"Researchers first criticized essays written by the study participants and then told some of them to hit a punching bag. Afterward, they gave them all an opportunity to blast loud noise at the person who had insulted their writing. People in the bag-hitting groups reported experiencing more anger and were more likely to blast noise than those who did nothing."

This does sound like a selection bias and priming.

You have a group of people who are criticised. Some of those people are told to do something physically violent. All were then told to push a button to blast a noise.

Blasting a noise is a mild aggression. Hitting a punching bag is much more aggressive. It's no surprise that the group primed for violence reported more anger and was more primed to the milder form of aggression.

Also how did the people hit the bag? Did any resist and needed encouragement. Did they punch it full force or just tap it so they could get their reward and leave?

There is no way this study can draw conclusions on people who are victims of sustained physical and emotional trauma. It only proves that people who had college essays criticised are more likely to press the beep button and feel angry if they're forced to punch a punching bag.

edit - I am biased. I endured a tough childhood with bipolar parents, physical and emotional abuse was involved. I know there is a venting trap where you can get comfortable and wallow, but that's like finding a local minima, without any form of catharsis you never heal, with undirected catharsis you get stuck, but catharsis coupled with guidance and reinforcement really does help.

It's pretty incredible how few comments in this thread are saying "huh, this is interesting, I should try this, research backs it up." That's the engineer or HN way, isn't it? (Not being sarcastic, I include myself in this). When data comes along which disproves or at least weakens a previously held position, adjust your priors and try it out.

Note: you can say "not until it's proven" but I can cite plenty of less weakly supported positions than "catharsis doesn't work" that have been enthusiastically taken up here. Consider trusting the data, at least a little bit, especially if you have a strongly emotional, but not well supported, response. This is the way (of the engineer).