Neuroscience on Impulsive Rage
"So, say somebody just runs a stop sign. When somebody does this and you see it, you’re just instantly consumed with anger. And that’s really interesting, if you think about it. Why anger? Why not some other emotion? And if you can see that it’s one of these defensive circuits — in this case, it’s the O trigger, for order in society — you will instantly know two things: One, you’re in a situation that is about to release a potentially violent reaction, because it’s hardwired in the brain to do something like that in response to these threats. And, two, if you recognize that this anger is caused by something in the modern world setting off this circuitry in a situation where getting in a physical fight is not going to be helpful, you instantly disarm the whole circuitry. R. Douglas Fields, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health, argues that there are nine major triggers that invoke the rage response, which he has assembled into the acronym LIFEMORTS" ...