Anger

Anger is an intense emotional state involving a strong, uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt, or threat.
A person experiencing anger will often experience physical effects, such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and increased levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline. Some view anger as an emotion that triggers part of the fight or flight response. Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside force.
Anger can have many physical and mental consequences. The external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language, physiological responses, and at times public acts of aggression. Facial expressions can range from inward angling of the eyebrows to a full frown. While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of "what has happened to them", psychologists point out that an angry person can very well be mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability.
Modern psychologists view anger as a normal and natural emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and as an emotion that has functional value for individual survival and mutual cooperation. However, uncontrolled anger can negatively affect personal or social well-being and may produce deleterious health effects and negatively impact those around them. While many philosophers and writers have warned against the spontaneous and uncontrolled fits of anger, there has been disagreement over the intrinsic value of anger. The issue of dealing with anger has been written about since the times of the earliest philosophers, but modern psychologists, in contrast to earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible ill effects of suppressing anger on one's well-being and interpersonal relationships.

Psychology and sociology

Three types of anger are recognized by psychologists:

Hasty and sudden anger is connected to the impulse for self-preservation. It is shared by humans and other animals, and it occurs when the animal feels tormented or trapped. This form of anger is episodic.
Settled and deliberate anger is a reaction to perceived deliberate harm or unfair treatment by others. This form of anger is episodic.
Dispositional anger is related more to character traits than to instincts or cognitions. Irritability, sullenness, and churlishness are examples of the last form of anger.

Anger can potentially mobilize psychological resources and boost determination toward correction of wrong behaviors, promotion of social justice, communication of negative sentiment, and redress of grievances. It can also facilitate patience. In contrast, anger can be destructive when it does not find its appropriate outlet in expression. Anger, in its strong form, impairs one's ability to process information and to exert cognitive control over one's behavior. An angry person may lose their objectivity, empathy, prudence or thoughtfulness and may cause harm to themselves or others. There is a sharp distinction between anger and aggression even though they mutually influence each other. While anger can activate aggression or increase its probability or intensity, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for aggression.

Neuropsychological perspective

Extension of the stimuli of the fighting reactions: At the beginning of life, the human infant struggles indiscriminately against any restraining force, whether it be another human being or a blanket which confines their movements. There is no inherited susceptibility to social stimuli as distinct from other stimulation, in anger. At a later date the child learns that certain actions, such as striking, scolding, and screaming, are effective toward persons, but not toward things. In adults, though the infantile response is still sometimes seen, the fighting reaction becomes fairly well limited to stimuli whose hurting or restraining influence can be thrown off by physical violence.
Brain regions which are activated when recognizing threat or provocation, and facilitate autonomic arousal and interoception and activate the stress response, are the salience network and subcortical area.

Differences between related concepts

Raymond Novaco of University of California Irvine, who since 1975 has published a plethora of literature on the subject, stratified anger into three modalities: cognitive, somatic-affective, and behavioral.
The words annoyance and rage are often imagined to be at opposite ends of an emotional continuum: mild irritation and annoyance at the low end and fury at the high end. Rage problems are conceptualized as "the inability to process emotions or life's experiences" either because the capacity to regulate emotion has never been sufficiently developed or because it has been temporarily lost due to more recent trauma. Rage is understood as raw, undifferentiated emotions, that spill out when another life event that cannot be processed, no matter how trivial, puts more stress on the organism than it can bear.
Anger, when viewed as a protective response or instinct to a perceived threat, is considered as positive. The negative expression of this state is known as aggression commits antisocial personality disorder and Intermittent explosive disorder. Acting on this misplaced state is rage due to possible potential errors in perception and judgment.
Examples

Expressions of anger used negatively	Reasoning
Over-protective instinct and hostility	To avoid conceived loss or fear that something will be taken away.
Entitlement and frustration	To prevent a change in functioning.
Intimidation and rationalization	To meet one's own needs.

Characteristics

William DeFoore, an anger management writer, described anger as a pressure cooker, stating that "we can only suppress or apply pressure against our happy for so long before it erupts".
One simple trichotomy of anger expression is passive anger versus aggressive anger versus assertive anger. These three types of anger have some characteristic symptoms:

Passive anger

Passive anger can be expressed in the following ways:

Dispassion, such as giving someone the cold shoulder or a fake smile, looking unconcerned or "sitting on the fence" while others sort things out, dampening feelings with substance abuse, overreacting, oversleeping, not responding to another's anger, frigidity, indulging in sexual practices that depress spontaneity and make objects of participants, giving inordinate amounts of time to machines, objects or intellectual pursuits, talking of frustrations but showing no feeling.
Evasiveness, such as turning one's back in a crisis, avoiding conflict, not arguing back, becoming phobic.
Defeatism, such as setting people up for failure, choosing unreliable people to depend on, being accident prone, underachieving, sexual impotence, expressing frustration at insignificant things but ignoring serious ones.
Obsessive behavior, such as needing to be inordinately clean and tidy, making a habit of constantly checking things, over-dieting or overeating, demanding that all jobs be done perfectly.
Psychological manipulation, such as provoking people to aggression and then patronizing them, provoking aggression but staying on the sidelines, emotional blackmail, false tearfulness, feigning illness, sabotaging relationships, using sexual provocation, using a third party to convey negative feelings, withholding money or resources.
Secretive behavior, such as stockpiling resentments that are expressed behind people's backs, giving the silent treatment or under-the-breath mutterings, avoiding eye contact, putting people down, gossiping, anonymous complaints, poison pen letters, stealing, and conning.
Self-blame, such as apologizing too often, being overly critical, inviting criticism.
Aggressive anger

The symptoms of aggressive anger are:

Bullying, such as threatening people directly, persecuting, insulting, pushing or shoving, using power to oppress, shouting, driving someone off the road, playing on people's weaknesses.
Destruction, such as destroying objects as in vandalism, harming animals, child abuse, destroying a relationship, reckless driving, substance abuse.
Grandiosity, such as showing off, expressing mistrust, not delegating, being a sore loser, wanting center stage all the time, not listening, talking over people's heads, expecting kiss and make-up sessions to solve problems.
Hurtfulness, such as violence, including sexual abuse, rape, racism, verbal abuse, biased or vulgar jokes, breaking confidence, using foul language, ignoring people's feelings, willfully discriminating, blaming, punishing people for unwarranted deeds, labeling others.
Risk-taking behavior, such as speaking too fast, walking too fast, driving too fast, reckless spending.
Selfishness, such as ignoring others' needs, not responding to requests for help, queue jumping.
Threats, such as frightening people by saying how one could harm them, their property or their prospects, finger pointing, fist shaking, wearing clothes or symbols associated with violent behavior, tailgating, excessively blowing a car horn, slamming doors.
Unjust blaming, such as accusing other people for one's own mistakes, blaming people for person's own feelings, making general accusations.
Unpredictability, such as explosive rages over minor frustrations, attacking indiscriminately, dispensing unjust punishment, inflicting harm on others for the sake of it, illogical arguments.
Vengeance, such as being over-punitive. This differs from retributive justice, as vengeance is personal, and possibly unlimited in scale.