Functional accounts of emotion have guided research for decades, with the core assumption that emotions are functional-they improve outcomes for people. Based on functional accounts of emotion, we theorized that anger should improve goal attainment in the presence of challenges. In seven studies, goal attainment was assessed in situations that involved varying levels of challenges to goal attainment. Across studies, anger compared to a neutral condition resulted in behavior that facilitated greater goal attainment on tasks that involved challenges. With a goal to solve difficult puzzles, anger resulted in more puzzles correctly solved (Study 1). With a goal to attain prizes, anger increased cheating rates and numbers of unearned prizes (Study 2). With a goal to do well in a video game, anger increased scores on a game with challenges to be avoided, but not other scores (Study 3). In two studies, examining the consequences of anger in response to the challenging task that was the focus of that anger, anger decreased reaction time with goals to win trials (Study 4), and predicted making the effort to vote in two contentious elections (Study 5). With a goal to protect financial resources, anger increased action taken to prevent loss compared to a physiological arousal condition (Study 6). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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愤怒有利于实现目标。

几十年来，情绪的功能性解释一直指导着研究，其核心假设是情绪是功能性的——它们可以改善人们的结果。基于情绪的功能性解释，我们推测，在面临挑战时，愤怒应该可以提高目标的实现率。在七项研究中，在涉及不同程度的目标实现挑战的情况下评估了目标实现情况。各项研究表明，与中性状态相比，愤怒会导致在涉及挑战的任务中促进更大目标实现的行为。以解决困难的谜题为目标，愤怒会导致更多正确解决的谜题（研究 1）。为了获得奖品，愤怒会增加作弊率和未获得的奖品数量（研究 2）。为了在电子游戏中取得好成绩，愤怒会提高需要避免挑战的游戏得分，但不会提高其他得分（研究 3）。在两项研究中，检查了愤怒对具有挑战性的任务的后果，这是愤怒的焦点，愤怒减少了以赢得审判为目标的反应时间（研究 4），并预测在两次有争议的选举中努力投票（研究5）。与生理唤醒条件相比，出于保护财务资源的目标，愤怒会增加为防止损失而采取的行动（研究 6）。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。