Lesson 11: Anger Management

Question 1

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Answer 1

Novaco (1975) suggests that cognitive factors trigger the emotional arousal which usually precedes aggressive acts. His argument is that, in some people, anger is too quick to surface, especially in situations that they perceive to be threatening but actually are not (hostile attribution bias).

Question 2

Anger Management

Answer 2

Anger management is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy. The individual is taught how to recognise when they are losing control, and encouraged to develop techniques which bring about conflict resolution without resorting to violence.

Question 3

Three Phases of Anger Management

Answer 3

1) Cognitive Preparation –The offender learns to identify the triggers for their anger. They reflect on events in the past when they became angry. They consider if the way that they interpreted those events was rational. The therapist’s role is to help the offender redefine the situation as non threatening. For example, an offender might interpret someone looking at them as threatening, but in actual fact the person ‘looking’ at them was just lost in thought.

2) Skill Acquisition – The offender is introduced to a range of techniques and skills to help them handle anger-provoking situations more rationally. Techniques could be cognitive (positive self-talk to encourage calmness); behavioural (assertiveness training to communicate more effectively); or physiological (methods of relaxation and meditation).

3) Application Practice – The offender is given the opportunity to practise the skills they learned in the skill acquisition stage in a carefully monitored environment. Role plays are often used to re-enact scenarios that in the past led to the offender committing an act of violence. The offender must take this seriously and see the scenario as real, and the therapist has to be brave and ‘wind up’ the offender. Successful negotiation of the role play will be met with positive reinforcement from the therapist.

Question 4

Advantages of Anger Management

Answer 4

+ Anger management is a multidisciplinary approach (cognitive, behavioural and social elements are included) which acknowledges that offending is a complex social and psychological behaviour, and any attempt to address it must include these different elements.

+ Unlike behaviour modification, anger management tries to get to the root cause of offending behaviour (the thought processes that lead to anger/violence), rather than focusing on superficial surface behaviour.

Question 5

Disadvantages of Anger Management

Answer 5

• The assumption that anger causes offending may be false. Many crimes, such as financial crime, are not motivated by anger. Even murder is not always motivated by anger, Harold Shipman murdered over 215 of his patients during his time working as a GP, and his motivation was to alleviate their suffering.
• Anger management programmes are expensive to run as they require a highly trained specialist who is used to dealing with violent offenders. Many prisons do not have the resources to run such programmes.
• The success of anger management is based on the commitment of those who participate, and this is a problem if prisoners are uncooperative or apathetic.