The level of anger experienced by the champions training judo measured by Spielberger’s Staxi-2 test

Abstract

The analysis of anger is definitely more common in sport; the results of aggressive behaviour or its consequences are very often discussed whereas feelings which trigger aggression are often omitted. Aggressive states are very frequently related to the feeling of anger. There are various forms of ag gression in sport; mainly these are instrumental and hostile aggression. Hostile aggression is an aggressive behaviour provoked by the feeling of anger. Instrumental aggression is an aggressive behaviour directed to the obstacle which is be tween an aggressor and aim which he/she wants to achieve. What’s more, it is not triggered by anger as such [1,2]. Re viewing the psychological concept of anger, Spielberger, Rit ter band and other authors [3] indicate significant incoherence and ambiguity of the following notions: anger, hostility and aggression. The authors also suggest the way to systematize the notions. They claim that although the above concepts are related to each other, they cannot be used interchangeably. They suggest to use the following term to define three phenomena: „AHA! Syndrome” (anger, hostility, aggression). Spielberger [4] defines anger as an emotional state which involves different feelings in terms of intensity ranging from subtle annoyance, irritation to strong fury and rage. Hostility is related to frequent experiencing angry feeling, however itself it refers to the complex set of behaviours such as: malice, scorn, revengefulness, cynicism, which provoke aggressive atti tude towards other people [5]. Whereas the concept of aggression refers to the states of destructive and penalizing nature directed towards other people or objects in the environment [6,7]. Anger is undoubtedly the core (nucleus) of AHA! Syndrome, however neither hostility nor aggression should be identified with anger. The basic difference between them is that anger is an emotion, hostility – an attitude and aggression – a behaviour [8]. The real problem is the lack of adequate methods to measure emotions of anger. Most frequently researchers use the R.B. Catell’s Questionnaires of personality, The Buss – Durke’s Inventory or the Z. Gas’s Inventory of Psychological Aggression Syndrome, which measure the level of aggression (behaviours), not of anger [9,10,11] Spielberger’s STAXI2 test may be an alternative to the above tests.