The Relationship of Cognitions, Assertion, and Anger Arousal
Several recent conceptualizations of anger have emphasized the importance of cognitive mediating processes. While there have been a few investigations showing correlations between cognitive distortion and anger, they have suffered methodological shortcomings. Anger difficulties have also been related to social skills deficits. The association has been inferred mainly through assertion treatment studies which usually show improvement in anger difficulties. There have been few studies examining an a priori relationship between assertion deficits and anger. The current correlational study of college students examined the relationship between self-report measures of general cognitive distortion, assertion-specific cognitive distortion, assertion, and anger difficulties. General cognitive distortion, though not assertion or assertion-related cognitions, was found to be related to anger. Moreover, hypotheses regarding which general cognitive distortions would be related to anger were largely supported. Implications of these findings are discussed.