This is an ABC podcast.

We humans have between six and eight basic emotions.

I say between six and eight because there's a few different views on this.

It depends on whose theory you're following.

But essentially, these emotions are disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and anger.

And those all have adaptive properties in terms of helping people survive and gain access to reproductive resources and reproduce.

So if you think about fear, for instance, you know, you see a snake, it elicits fear,

you run away, you live to, you know, go walk in the woods another day. Disgust, for instance,

you see something that's potentially infectious, that elicits disgust, and you don't touch it,

so you don't die. But today we're focusing on anger. And anger is useful in many ways because it can get us what we want.

For instance, like if you get angry, people will back down, right?

If you think about two animals like fighting over some food, the one who becomes aggressive

is going to win and they'll eat and possibly have greater reproductive success and so on.

On a bigger stage, it can lead to change. Collective action, for instance, is a good case of that.

But we also know anger can be deeply destructive.

I exploded in such a way that I landed up

smashing the family car with a spill pipe.

Everyone that was there at the time was absolutely terrified.

And still today, I can remember seeing the look of two children absolutely frightened.

And when I focused on who they were, they were my kids and they were absolutely scared, and that's

what stopped me dead in my tracks.

You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Khadar. So what shapes a person's propensity for anger?

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