The use of anger management to change behaviour
- Anger management is a treatment programme used in prisons (and other therapeutic settings such as group or individual counselling) to enable offenders to control and manage their hostile/violent/antisocial responses and thereby reduce the likelihood of recidivism
- The aim of anger management is to change the way offenders respond to situations that are likely to trigger anger per individual
- According to Novaco (1970) the physiological effects of anger surface first and are then followed by the psychological effects e.g. a racing heart, increased blood pressure and shallow breathing may lead to feelings of fury, hostility and the desire to control the situation via the anger response
- CBT is particularly effective in tackling anger as it harnesses and re-trains thought patterns and behaviour as the client progresses through stages which help them to identify the emotional, cognitive and behavioural patterns that are destructive and likely to lead to (possibly violent) outbursts
- There are three stages of anger management as follows:
|
Stage in anger management |
Description |
|
Cognitive preparation |
Irrational thoughts and likely triggers to anger are identified and challenged e.g. ‘the way in which someone speaks to you does not need to be interpreted as a challenge’ |
|
Skills acquisition |
A range of skills are learned which are all designed to help the offender deal with potentially anger-inducing situations e.g. breathing, relaxation, reframing confrontational situations, self-talk etc. |
|
Application practice |
The offender and therapist engage in role-play to test the degree to which the offender is able to put their newly learned skills into practice e.g. ‘I will deliberately provoke you in this scenario and you will have to respond calmly to the provocation in order to de-escalate the situation’ |
- Research into the effectiveness of anger management will generally take place in a prison or secure facility and will use a range of self-reporting methods (e.g. questionnaire, interview) combined with reports from prison staff as to the behaviour of the offenders on the programme (possibly via use of a behaviour checklist)
- Offenders on an anger management programme may be asked to keep a diary or journal of their progress which can work as an additional source of motivation for them
Exam Tip
If you are writing an AO3 response to a question on anger management you should devote some of your response to evaluating the use of self-report methods in prison (this will give your answer context rather than it being a generic treatment of self-reporting). For example, prisoners may succumb to social desirability bias differently to the general population e.g. they may over-report (initially at least) their own acts of violence or hostility in order to appear ‘hard’ or threatening. Prisoners may also take part in anger management simply as a way to get out of their cells and break the boring monotony of prison life which means that their responses would lack sincerity and thus invalidate the whole process.
Anger management programmes give offenders the opportunity to address difficult and challenging trigger points in their lives.
Research which investigates anger management
- Ireland (2004) found a 92% improvement in the behaviour of offenders after they had engaged with anger management, compared to those that had not
- Keen et al. (2000) assessed the progress of young offenders taking part in the National Anger Management Package (eight two-hour sessions of anger management over a series of weeks) and found that the benefits of taking the course were that the participants became more self-aware and able to control their anger
Evaluation of anger management
Strengths
- Research (as outlined above) shows consistently strong support for the advantages of anger management programmes in prison
- Anger management appears to be more effective than other forms of behaviour modification in that it addresses cognition, behaviour and environment in a multidisciplinary approach to changing behaviour
Weaknesses
- There is limited evidence as to the long-term effectiveness of anger management programmes: role-play with a therapist lacks mundane realism as it cannot hope to replicate real-life anger-inducing situations (e.g. a drunken altercation on a Saturday night)
- Not all crimes have anger at the heart of them e.g. drug-dealing, burglary, fraud so anger management programmes would be invalid when addressing the motivations behind such crimes
Link to Issues & Debates:
Anger management programmes provide a more holistic approach to changing offender behaviour than other behaviour modification programmes such as token economies as they incorporate cognitive, behavioural and social explanations and treatments for the offender’s sources of anger.
Worked example
The table below outlines the results obtained from a study of an anger management programme conducted in a prison. Participants in Group A followed the anger management programme for 3 months whereas participants in Group B received no anger management for 3 months (the control group).
Table: number of anger-related acts across 3 months committed by the anger-management group and the control group:
|
Group A |
Number of anger-related acts |
Group B |
Number of anger-related acts |
|
1 |
4 |
1 |
11 |
|
2 |
9 |
2 |
12 |
|
3 |
10 |
3 |
23 |
|
4 |
5 |
4 |
10 |
|
5 |
8 |
5 |
27 |
|
6 |
11 |
6 |
15 |
|
7 |
3 |
7 |
17 |
|
Mean |
|
Mean |
|
Calculate the mean for Group A and for Group B:
Mean for Group A:
Mean for Group B:
Why was the mean the most suitable measure of central tendency to use for this data set?
[3]
AO2 = 3 marks
Possible answer content could include:
- Mean for Group A = 7.14 (accept any answers of 7 or 7.1) [1 mark]
- Mean for Group B = 16.43 (accept any answers of 16 or 16.4) [1 mark]
- The mean was the most suitable measure of central tendency as it takes all of the scores into account in its calculation [1 mark]
- or
- The mean gives an average performance score which can be used to predict future outcomes [1 mark]
- or
- The mean is more sensitive than the median or the mode and so will provide a more representative measure of central tendency [1 mark]
