The Expression of Anger in Psychotherapy for Depression: Its Role and Measurement

The first of the two studies presented proposed and tested a method for unobtrusively assessing levels of angry affect. Angry emotions were more consistently and specifically rated using samples that incorporated only voice-quality cues (i.e., content-filtered speech) than when samples represented either verbal-content cues only (i.e., session transcripts) or both voice-quality and verbal-content cues (i.e., undoctored audiotapes). The second study then used voice-quality ratings (content-filtered speech samples) to test the hypotheses that anger expression is associated positively with conflict resolution and negatively with experiences of hurt. Voice-quality ratings of anger expression were obtained from sessions characterized by either high or low conflict resolution among eight clients in experiential psychotherapy. As expected, high levels of expressed anger were found to be associated with successful conflict resolution. However, high levels of expressed anger were not associated with decreased expressions of hurt, as had been predicted.