ABSTRACT
Anger, pugnacity, persistence, self-assertion and self-display. Each of these four tendencies and one emotion seems at times to be closely associated with some one of the others, and yet, at times, as our facts will show, pairs of them, sometimes said to be closely linked, seem to be quite dissociated. As a preliminary for our study of them, it may be useful to bear in mind two or three prominent points of view. James and McDougall treated anger as the emotional aspect of the instinct of pugnacity. Thorndike, on the other hand, insists that pugnacious behaviour and angry behaviour both need to be analysed ; and he would divide the so-called fighting instincts into at least six, namely, escape from restraint, overcoming a moving obstacle, counter attack, irrational response to pain, combat, in rivalry and several other minor types.1 Again, some leading psychologists have contended that anger is apt to be roused when any strong conative impulse is thwarted more particularly by human opposition. While I never felt convinced of the intimate and invariable association of emotion with all those instinctive tendencies which McDougall has described, it must be said that this particular propensity, McDougall himself points out, pre-supposes others 2 and that anger itself, or rather the instinct-emotion, pugnacityanger, after childhood 4 ceases to express itself in its crude natural manner, save when most intensely excited, and becomes rather a source of increased energy of action towards the end set by any other instinct; the energy of its impulse adds itself to and reinforces that of other impulses and so helps us to overcome our difficulties \
One other preliminary point should be dealt with before we begin to examine the facts before us. In popular psychological and educational literature there is often a vague and very wide use of the term self-assertion, and anger is apt to be particularly associated with the impulse of self-assertion. All persistence and effort to excel are apt to be ascribed largely to the instinct of selfassertion ; whereas there is a tendency (sometimes strong and sometimes weak) for any conative impulse to persist until its end is accomplished.
