What Is Your Anger Style?
Fists, words, a hot temper or a cold suspicion - anger travels by different roads
Everyone gets angry. What differs is where the anger goes. Some people shout and forget about it by dinner; some never raise their voice but quietly decide that most people are out to get them; a few still let it out with their hands. The questionnaire this test is adapted from split aggression into four parts that turn out to be only loosely linked, and your mix of the four says more than any single anger score could.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about how you have actually behaved in the last couple of years, including the moments you are not proud of. Nobody sees your answers.
What it measures
The four parts of the Buss-Perry model: physical aggression and verbal aggression (what you do), anger (the heat of the feeling) and hostility (the cold belief that others are against you). It is not a conflict-style test, which asks how you negotiate disagreements, nor an impulsivity test, which covers acting without thinking in general.
Based on: Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992)
Possible results
Physical aggression
Whether anger ever reaches your hands.
Verbal aggression
How readily anger comes out as words.
Anger
How fast and how hot the feeling itself runs.
Hostility
The cold side: suspicion and resentment towards others.
Common questions
Is anger the same as aggression?
No, and that distinction is the point of this model. Anger is a feeling; aggression is an action meant to hurt, with the body or with words. Plenty of people feel intense anger and almost never act on it, and some people act aggressively in a cold, calculated way with very little anger at all.
Is it healthier to let anger out?
Not in the way the popular advice suggests. Studies on venting - hitting a pillow, shouting it out - find it tends to keep anger going rather than drain it. What helps is naming the anger, cooling down physically, and then dealing with the actual problem when you can think again.
Why does hostility matter if I never act on it?
Because it shapes how you read everyone around you. Constant suspicion is tiring to live with and pushes away the people who might have proved you wrong - which can end up making the belief feel confirmed. That cost is real even in people who rarely lose their temper.
Sources
- Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.3.452
- Bryant, F. B., & Smith, B. D. (2001). Refining the architecture of aggression: A measurement model for the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality. doi:10.1006/jrpe.2000.2302
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, so scores are not comparable to the published norms. The four-part structure has replicated, but not perfectly: a shorter 12-item version fits better, and physical aggression works differently across ages, genders and cultures. People also tend to under-report aggression. This describes a normal-range trait, not a diagnosis. If your anger is hurting people around you or you fear what you might do, talk to a doctor or psychologist.