Reclining Sitting Posture Reduces Anger

Anger is one of the basic human emotions,which occurs almost every day in our daily life.Especially when people are offended,anger will appear,and according to the Injustice-Revenge model,we can infer the path between offence-anger-revenge(revenge also known as reactive aggression).When the individual is offended,the results of attribution and evaluation of the offense determines whether he(she)will be anger.If the offence causes anger,people will use cognition to decide whether to take retaliatory strategies.Therefore it is feasible to study offence,anger and revenge together.Since perception can affect whether people are angry and revengeful or not.Then this paper will explore the influence of cognition on the intensity of state anger and the emergence of reactive aggression after people are offended from the perspective of embodied cognition.Conceptual metaphor theory from the perspective of embodied cognition holds that human cognition is based on physical experience.If a certain physical experience has been linked with a certain kind of cognition in the long-term evolution of human beings,then when our body is in the state of physical experience,the cognition of the state will appear,which is what we often call the metaphor,such as "body proximity means emotional intimacy,body distance means emotional depersonalization".So is the reclining sitting posture corresponding to calmness and the straight sitting posture corresponding to attack in physical experience? Therefore,the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of different sitting postures on the intensity of state anger and the likelihood of reactive aggression after the individual is offended.In experiment 1,we control their sitting posture(reclining/straight)by using the between-subject design.They were asked to use the paper plagiarized stories as offensive materials to trigger their anger.Subsequently,using the self-reported anger and whether to retaliate as dependent variables.The results showed that there was no significant difference in anger intensity between subjects maintained the reclining sitting posture and those who maintained the sitting posture after reading the anger priming materials,but it was unexpectedly to found that gender moderated the effect of sitting posture on anger.At the same time,subjects who maintained the reclining sitting posture chose fewer to retaliate offenders and more to forgive offenders in the experimental material than those maintained the straight sitting posture.According to Cognition-Emotion-Behavior Model and Aggressive Attribution Theory,the intention of offensive behavior also affects the individual’s anger and aggressive tendency.In the experiment 2,we adjusted the experimental materials and added offensive intentions into independent variables.We taking 2(sitting posture: reclining/straight)× 2(intentions of the offense in anger initiating materials: intentional offence vs.unintentional offence).The paper plagiarized story used as intentional offensive material,and the break up gift story used as unintentional offensive material.The subjects’ self-reported anger and whether to retaliate or not were the dependent variables.The results showed that after reading the unintentional offensive materials,the anger intensity of the subjects who maintained the reclining sitting posture was significantly lower than those subjects who maintained the straight sitting posture.And that,gender still plays a moderating role in the process of sitting posture affecting anger.In the interaction analysis between sitting posture and intentions of the offense,we found that intentions of the offense also had a moderating effect on the process of sitting posture affecting anger.At the same time,whether unintentionally offended or intentionally offended,the subjects who maintained the reclining sitting posture chose to retaliate offenders fewer and to forgive offenders more in the experimental material than those who maintained the straight sitting posture.In summary,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)Different sitting postures can affect the intensity of anger,but in this influence,offensive intentions can be moderated.(2)The influence of sitting posture on anger intensity is also moderated by gender.Whether the subjects read intentional/unintentional offensive materials,the influence of sitting posture on anger will be different between male and female.(3)Regardless of the intentions of the offense,the subjects who maintained the reclining posture chose to retaliate offenders fewer and to forgive offenders more in the experimental material than those who maintained the straight sitting posture.