Why We Snap at Work

 We’ve all seen it. A coworker flips out over a trivial incident and unloads an angry verbal assault on a stunned co-worker. The consequences of suddenly “losing it” in the workplace can be career changing. It is important to understand what happens in the brain when someone breaks abruptly from rational, peaceful, behavior and explodes in a blind rage as if bent on physical violence, and to appreciate why the workplace can become a common arena for snapping. Continue...

 

An important thing to understand is the role of the brain’s threat detection circuitry in snapping in rage. This neuroscience perspective illuminates why the sudden anger and aggression is unleashed abruptly without conscious thought. The rapid-fire threat detection circuitry resides in a part of the brain that operates unconsciously (the hypothalamus). This neural defense mechanism evolved to unleash instantaneous and fearless aggression to confront a sudden threat. This makes sense in the wild, but how could this possibly be relevant to the workplace?

First we must understand what triggers these neural circuits of rage. Only a relatively small number of specific types of provocations will activate the brain’s defensive rage circuitry, because engaging in sudden aggression is risky. Any animal that is attacked will react violently if necessary for self-defense, for example. The neural circuitry for this “defensive aggression” in response to being physically attacked is different from the circuitry in the same part of the brain that unleashes “maternal aggression” in which a mother will fight viciously to protect her young.

There are nine neural triggers of sudden rage and aggression and they can be remembered by the mnemonic LIFEMORTS. There is not space to describe each of the triggers here and you can read more about them in my book, Why We Snap, but the “L” (life-and-limb) and “F” (family) triggers activate the two neural circuits for defensive and maternal aggression just mentioned. In the workplace, the “I” (insult) trigger is often what trips snapping in anger. Insult is often a trigger for rage and violence in barroom brawls, duels to the death in the recent past, and frequently the cause of snapping in the workplace. To understand why, we need to look at other social mammals to see the roots of this aggressive reaction to insult.

Human beings are utterly dependent on a complex social structure for survival. As in all social mammals, an individual’s status within the social structure translates directly into privileges and resources needed for survival. In the animal world, including non-human primates, physical aggression is how dominance is established. Contests of physical violence between individuals--think head butting between rams--establishes each animal’s status within the social structure.

The purpose of the emotion “anger” is to prepare us to fight. Apart from exceptionally barbaric times and places in human history, outright violence is not how we establish dominance in society, but as mammals we still retain that neural circuitry in our brain that equipped our ancestors to physically fight for dominance according to the brutal laws of nature. This explains why anger, rather than some other emotion, is provoked when our dominance is threatened. Humans, however, also have language. Verbal insult substitutes for physical violence in contests for dominance.

Hierarchy of authority in the workplace is essential. Individuals in an organization understand and accept the necessary hierarchy of dominance, but we are all constantly struggling to maintain or to increase our status in an organization. We do that by healthy collaboration and competition, but if an individual suddenly feels their dominance is being challenged or is at risk, the same defensive circuits of rage in our brain that launched our predecessors into a violent battle for dominance become activated. There are many other types of provocations encountered in the workplace that trip other defensive circuits in our brain, but threats to one’s dominance is a common one. A person who feels overlooked for a promotion, undermined, let down or sabotaged by a coworker, disrespected or suddenly faced with insubordination, instantly feels their position of dominance at risk, and that ancient circuit of violent rage is tripped.

Chronic stress places the triggers of rage on edge. This is understandable, because stress is the emotion that our threat detection circuitry uses to let our conscious mind know that we are in danger. It makes sense that the brain’s threat response should be put on high alert in times of danger. However, the consequence of chronic stress is that all the triggers of rage are much more prone to misfiring. Sometimes stress from pressures at work is responsible, but often the stress can have nothing to do with work. Just as the stress of work can be carried home and cause us to snap at family, stresses outside work carry into the office and will have the same effect there. Managers must be sensitive to signs of heightened stress in employees, and each of us must recognize that when we are experiencing chronic stress we are more likely to snap at others.

It is helpful to employ techniques to reduce chronic stress and anger, but rather than trying to suppress sudden anger, it can be more effective to be able to instantly recognize why you are suddenly consumed by a rising rage in response to a situation in the workplace. Learning the LIFEMORTS triggers can enable you to disarm the snap response and prevent a regrettable misfire. If you perceive that the sudden rise in anger is caused by a misfire of one of the biological triggers of rage designed to prepare you for a physical fight, the rage response will be disarmed because you will know why--at the level of brain science--you are suddenly consumed with anger and ready to fight. You will instantly recognize that the present situation is probably not one that is going to be successfully resolved by a physical fight.

This intellectual trip into the jungle may seem an abstraction, but so much in our modern life are abstractions of the basic biological needs and requirements of life. Money substitutes for food and shelter; shopping substitutes for hunting, but the brain we have today is identical to the brain human beings had 100,000 years ago when we spent our days roaming the planes of Africa rather than perched in office cubicles.

Douglas Fields, PhD, is senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He is editor in chief of Neuron Glia Biology. His new book is called WHY WE SNAP: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain.