SOUL + BODY: The Glee in Getting Mad

Neuroscience has now proved what many people know and many more like to deny: Getting angry feels good. Research from Vanderbilt University Brain Institute (Nashville, Tennessee) has shown that the brain processes aggression as a reward. “It is well known that dopamine is produced in response to rewarding stimuli, such as food, sex, and drugs of abuse,” says Maria Couppis, who conducted the anger study as her doctoral thesis. “We've now found that it also serves as positive reinforcement for aggression.”
    For the experiments, a pair of mice — one male, one female — was kept in one cage and five “intruder” male mice were kept in a separate cage. The female mouse was temporarily removed, and an intruder was introduced, triggering an aggressive response by the “home” male mouse.
    The home mouse was then trained to poke a target with its nose to get the intruder to return, at which point it again behaved aggressively. The home mouse consistently poked the trigger, which was presented once a day, indicating it experienced the aggressive encounter with the intruder as a reward.
    The same home mice were then treated with a drug that suppressed their dopamine receptors, and their frequency of inviting the intruders declined.
    In a separate experiment, the mice were treated with the dopamine receptor suppressors again, and their movements in an open cage were observed. They showed no significant changes in overall movement compared to times when they had not received the drugs. This was done to demonstrate that their decreased aggression in the previous experiment was not caused by overall lethargy in response to the drug, a problem that had confounded previous experiments.
    The Vanderbilt experiments, published in Psychopharmacology (January 2008), are the first to demonstrate a link between behavior and the activity of dopamine receptors in response to an aggressive event.
So, now admit it — you enjoy getting angry. Yes, you do. You know you do. And don’t you dare contradict me!