Reddit reviews Readings About The Social Animal

Lol I actually have old notes from college about this. Basically, there are two primary theories surrounding catharsis:

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• Catharsis Theory (Hydraulic model of anger) - if people bottle up their negative emotions, it will eventually cause them to explode out in aggressive rage. Therefore, venting anger will produce a positive improvement in one’s psychological state.
  
• Cognitive neoassociation theory - aversive events ) are linked together in memory to form a network of emotional reactions related to violence. Therefore, venting should increase rather than decrease angry feelings and behaviors. If the individual is inducted to think about something else, their anger will dissipate in time.
  
  To figure out which one of these theories was correct, some researchers set up the following experiment:
  
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• Three groups of people were deliberately provoked in the same way - they were told to write an essay about a subject that was close to them (e.g. death penalty, abortion, etc.) and then were given a "partner's" essay to grade. Their 'partner' supposedly read their paper and graded it, but the 'partner' wrote deliberately inflammatory comments - this paper was the worst thing I've ever read, whoever wrote this has no idea what they were talking about.
  
• Afterwards, the subjects went into three different rooms.
  
• The 'rumination' group subjects were shown what their "essay partner" looked like (which was actually a picture of some random dude) and told to hit a punching bag for 15 minutes while thinking of their partner.
  
• The 'distraction' group subjects were shown a photo of someone exercising and told to think of becoming physically fit while hitting a punching bag for 15 minutes.
  
• The 'control' group was told to sit quietly by themselves for 15 minutes.
  
• Afterwards, subjects were individually into another room. Every subject was told they were going to evaluate a random stranger's problem solving skills. The stranger was behind a two-way mirror and couldn't see the subject. The subject were told to play a loud sound in the stranger's ear if they got a problem wrong. The subjects could choose the duration and intensity of the noise.
  
• Researchers found that the subjects who had been part of the 'rumination' group used higher intensity sounds for a longer period of time
  
• Subjects who had been part of the 'control' group on average chose to punish the stranger with less intense sounds for a shorter period of time.
  
  Tldr; This particular experiment supports the 'Cognitive Neoassociation Theory' aka, the 'catharsis doesn't work theory'. You can find the experiment in Readings About the Social Animal. It was probably my favorite sociology book in college.