In the past couple weeks, I’ve been somewhat facetiously arguing that screaming, and hitting, and generally not repressing anger has positive health benefits. Today, or reading a chapter on hypertension in the “The Divided Mind” book, I come across the following content describing the difference between two forms of anger, “anger-out” and “anger-in.”

Anger-out is the anger we feel and express. The guy with a high anger-out score is the type of person who frequently explodes in anger. Everyone knows he is angry. The studies are clear that this type of person is not prone to develop hypertension (Jorgensen et al., 1996).

It seems to me everything we been told about how to behave in society — no hitting, no biting, no screaming, no self-absorbed narcissism — is completely incorrect. Being nice to others, by not hitting them when they offend you, is slowly killing us.