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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 steel pipe.

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