Why do people get angry when other people disagree with them?

My belief is this.

Whenever somebody "loses their shit" it is because their self-image was threatened and they transitioned from feeling good about themselves to feeling bad about themselves. When they were feeling good they had the inner resources to deal with it but feeling bad they regress to when they were a toddler and they act that way.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_the_Self

1. Because nearly every culture has some form of serious dysfunction with conflict.

2. Because our educational systems have not prioritized conflict resolution skills (along with a host of other critical soft skills). It seems insane to me that we can teach a HS kid calculus, but not how to manage relationships.

Anger is the emotion we feel when we've run out of rational options. People only get angry when others disagree with them if they don't feel like they can argue their side. They might feel like they can't argue their side for several reasons:

- They don't have an argument - They don't believe the other person will listen to their argument - They don't have time to argue - They're tired and don't want to feel like it - They don't know why they believe what they believe - They know their idea is wrong

Some of the reasons above are rational, some are not. But you don't usually feel anger if you feel like you have a rational path forward. (i.e., you have an argument that you enjoy explaining to people that you believe will listen to).

Because unless you agree with me, you're a bad, evil person who deserves a punch in the face!

More seriously, I suspect that it's related, at least in part, to (as are many stress/anger-inducing things) insecurity and/or frustration.

If you "know" something and another person disagrees, that's sometimes considered an insult or affront to that person's value as a human. If one is insecure about themselves, it feels like an attack.

Even if you're interacting with, say, a flat-earther and they categorically deny that we live on an oblate spheroid, and no amount of evidence or explanation will convince them, that can be frustrating.

I wonder if such reactions are related to (poor) impulse control?

There is a process that goes like this:

1. You imagine, create or otherwise accept some explanation for things.

2. You start building identity facets on the myth from (1).

3. Based on your identity concepts, you start orienting yourself in social groups and to other people. You're a Bleen so you oppose Nerps. You're pro-Xlarg and you oppose the anti-Xlargs.

4. Someone refutes your myth from (1)

Now that person isn't just attacking some boring bit of data but they are attacking your core identity, both how you define yourself in isolation and how you define yourself in relation to others. If your Bleen identity is a sham, then you can't even be sure if other Bleens are your friends!

Thus most arguments have little to do with truth finding and much more to do with staking out identity statements.

We like these kinds of prebuilt identities (I support Xlarg, therefore I am a Bleen) because it removes danger. It's a resistance to feeling like an imposter. We attack others who may have doubts about this whole identity ("What if we've been wrong this whole time about Xlarg?") because to accept the doubters would undermine our own identity construct.

This also makes a given identity more exclusive over time. We make ourselves extremists because we want to be the most pure of the Bleens so nobody can doubt us. We attack other "imposters".

It's specifically those identity facet making points that become scary disagreement zones. No facts or logic will help you win.

There are plenty of good psychological answers here. Here's a philosophical one:

According to existential philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, "true beliefs" are very old ideas that we have 'inhabited for centuries' and have come to trust implicitly - without question. What we call "beliefs" are "ideas" (about reality) that function as coping mechanisms. They help us deal with the crisis of 'not knowing'.

Both are subject to reinforcement/agreement or challenge from "the world", society or by individuals. We like reinforcement and agreement because it makes us feel safe. When someone challenges our beliefs, it threatens to throw us into crisis. It can make us angry because it goes right to the core of our sense of safety. I think a lot of political i.e. socio-economic, religious and tribal disagreements fall into this category.

Almost all of us get "angry" about almost any disagreement, but the degree may be so mild that we often do not view them as getting angry. But if you are careful, you can see the emotional reactions for example in facial micro gestures. So why does almost everybody react to almost all of such challenges?

Humans must have an "organ" (let's call it that, it is not actually physically a seperate organ) for keeping our world view constant. Think about it: if we did not have constant world view, we would be unable to operate in the world, even to lift a glass of water to drink it -- because the next moment we would not know what this object we have in our hand is. So such an organ is necessary for us to be able to function in the world. We can call this "organ" the ego.

Our world view consists of various kinds of beliefs. We could say that each belief has an associated valency -- i.e. how strongly we believe in it. When we learn something, initially we assign high valency to the belief -- this is essentially the Dunning-Kruger effect. Everybody knows that somebody who has just converted to a belief (such as any -ism or religion) is the most vocal proponent of it.

Over time, when we encounter things that challenge our beliefs, we may start questioning our beliefs or our beliefs may become stronger. What happens depends on multiple things.

For example, how we encounter things that challenge our beliefs. It is easiest to swallow something if somebody is "feeding us with a small spoon". Also, our mental state when we encounter challenges to our world view has a huge impact. Our personality has an impact as well.

I think this goes far far deeper than just ego.

I believe it’s possibly a fundamental mechanism of intelligence.

We have a drive to “be right”. We feel “good” when our model of reality is stable - where we feel confident that we can reliably predict the future.

Destabilizing our model or reality makes us feel bad by possibly triggering things like adrenaline, cortisol, etc.

Our primitive brain solution to this destabilization is raising our voice and going into fight mode.

Hard to overcome. I like to think I’m decent at staying chill and level headed but I occasionally have spikes of anger when I hear things that are wildly out of sync with my models.

We’ve got a neural net wrapped around a lizard brain. We’re human.

Sometimes:

1. It's their ego and identity wrapped up and it's a threat there.

2. They've been gaslighted so much that the disagreement is poses as a derailment (This is when the disagreement is disingenuous)

I'm sure there are other reasons as well.

People are animals most of the time and only rarely are they humans capable of higher order thinking, rationality, planning.

If a dog bites you, what use is it for you to blame the dog? It's just an animal. The more judicious use of time is to manage the situation the best you can. Avoid the dog in the future.

Someone disagrees with you, are they acting as an animal or human? Is it on an important issue? Is there any merit to their argument? If no to both just avoid the animal.

If you are disagreeing with someone, are they responding as an animal or human? Same, engage the human, avoid the animal.

Anger is one manifestation of fear--really they are two sides of the same coin. It's a question of if that fear is going to trigger a fight (anger) or a flight (being afraid) response. Fear, in turn, arises from a believe that we will somehow be "hurt" by some situation. Obviously these perceived threats may be real or imagined, physical or emotional.

If someone (including yourself) is getting angry when someone disagrees with them, the question is really "what are they afraid of?" The answer can very in detail greatly depending on the relationship to the person, environment, and all sorts of other circumstances.

However, much of the fears we experience stem from a fear of loss, or a fear or a fear of failure. [1] "The fear of failure is a fear of not being loved, valued, appreciated or wanted. The fear of loss is a fear that you won’t have what you need, want or deserve." That means that after sifting through the various situational specifics it will eventually boil down to either a loss or a failure. That doesn't mean there is a realistic/logic reason for why an opinion of "A" directly leads to the painful outcome of "Z". It does mean we, at some level, believe it will nonetheless.

Over years in management, I've found a lot of material support such a line of reasoning from all over, but I don't know where to give original credit to. I'll add a few seemingly respectable references that refer to similar sentiments that I gathered from a quick search.

[1] https://www.ksl.com/article/24314970/anger-management-ndash-... [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/201811/h... [3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mindfulness-practice_b_420856... [4] http://www.psychologyineverydaylife.net/2012/05/29/masks-of-...

I like the idea of Terror Management Theory [0], where a disagreement may be taken by a person as an indirect threat to its life. While there were some experiments, I guess they should be taken with a grain of salt.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

Lizard brain. Triggering fight/flight response overriding neocortex trying to keep things calm. Defensiveness, possible insecurity.

It's a human response to being challenged. It's not about right or wrong, it's about dominance. The animal that was right but at the bottom of the social ladder died. The animal that was wrong but still managed to make it to the top, had lots and lots of progeny when endowed us with the same anger problems

Any idea based on a hyperreality is vulnerable to being called out like the story of the emperor's new clothes. Anyone who benefits from the hyperreality has a vested interest in keeping the consensus.

My favorite: I'm sitting quietly while some group around me "discusses" something. I get asked my opinion. I give it. Someone gets angry because my opinion differs from theirs.

It depends on what the disagreement is about. Javascript vs Python? Floyd vs Zeppelin? Pineapple on pizza? Could care less. Will happily debate all day long.

Whether different races are inferior? Should sick people just be allowed to die if they can't afford healthcare? Now you've got my wind up, because those are opinions that actually affect the quality of my life or the lives of other people. They're not just intellectual exercises, even if they see that way to you - likely because you're not the one with something to lose.

Things like eugenics don't really bear arguing about, because the science is irrelevant in consideration of people and their right to live and be happy. If your brain can't sort that one out - and I'm not saying youra can't, I mean in general - it's probably not other people who are defective in this situation.

Tl:dr; some opinions draw blood and should be considered carefully before keeping, much less wielding.

People believe the things they choose are part of their identity. Food, clothes, tools, opinions. When those things are criticised, it feels like an attack on the identity rather than the thing.

Because they tie their own sense of success to others' opinions about them.

Identity feels attacked.