Ph.D. Candidate Patricia Louie and Professor William Magee have co-authored an article published in Race and Social Problems, entitled "Did the Difference Between Black and White Americans in Anger-Out Decrease During the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century?” This article examines the black–white difference in anger-in and anger-out in a sample representative of Americans aged 40 and older. The authors also discuss current trends in political anger expression and how they may be related to the patterns observed.
Patricia Louie is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She explores the racial patterning of mental health in her work. Currently, her research examines racial disparities in mental and physical health using multiple dimensions of race, including skin tone. She also examines the counterbalancing role of social stressors and coping resources in explaining race and skin tone inequalities in health.
William Magee is an Associate Professor and the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is interested in the moral and emotional aspects of social and personal problems. He teaches courses on the sociology of health and illness, quality of life, and emotions.
We have posted the citation and the abstract of the article below. The full text is available here.
Magee, William and Patricia Louie. “Did the Difference Between Black and White Americans in Anger-Out Decrease During the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century?” Race and Social Problems 8(3): 256–70.
Studies have found blacks in the USA report lower levels of anger-out and higher levels of anger-in than whites. However, most of the research on anger expression has been based on data from limited samples. The current study investigates the black–white difference in anger-in and anger-out in a sample representative of Americans aged 40 and older. Data are from the two most recent waves of the Americans’ Changing Lives (ACL) surveys. In 2001, the ACL assessed both outcomes, with anger-out re-assessed in 2011. Thus, individual-level change in anger-out can be investigated. Drawing on literature on “anger privilege,” civility, the politicization of anger, and related topics, we develop and evaluate hypotheses about: (1) the race difference in anger-out over time, (2) race as a moderator of the gender difference in both forms of anger expression, and (3) the impact of controlling for perceived discrimination on anger expression. We find blacks to report greater expressive reticence with regard to their anger (i.e., anger-in) than whites in 2001. That race difference became nonsignificant when discrimination was controlled. The race difference in anger-out was of borderline significance in 2001 and became significant after discrimination was controlled. Longitudinal analyses show that the race difference in anger-out decreased over time. The rate that anger-out decreased by did not significantly differ by race. We discuss processes that that could contribute to our results. We also speculate about how current trends in political anger expression might be related to the patterns we observe.