When you are angry, leave first, and treat the other person as weather rather than as an enemy

Looking at what just happened from another angle, or standing in the other person’s place for a moment, both bring the emotion down; the second works better. Simply not showing the emotion also has a little effect. Forcing the feeling down inside, or forcing yourself not to think about the thing, does nothing. People who punished the person who offended them kept turning it over longer afterward; people who did not retaliate moved on faster.

Cost

No money. In the moment you have to hold back from answering, turn around, and walk off, then decide afterward whether to deal with it. That takes a little practice.

Benefit

Pooling 306 sets of experiments for comparison (a meta-analysis): re-explaining what happened from another angle (cognitive reappraisal) had an effect on emotion of d = 0.36. Standing in the other person's place had d = 0.45. Shifting attention had d = 0.27. Holding down the outward show of emotion (not letting it show) worked, d = 0.32. Forcing the feeling down did not work (d = -0.04). Forcing yourself not to think about the thing also did not work (d = -0.12). These figures pool inner feeling, outward expression, and bodily response. The abstract does not give them separately. Three other experiments show that people who punished the offender kept turning the other person over for longer afterward, and people who did not punish moved on faster. People overestimate in advance how good revenge will feel.

Notes

The part that pools many studies measures how strong the emotion is, not energy. The effect is small to medium. The revenge part is only one set of experiments, so the grade is B. The "empty boat" is a fable in the "Mountain Tree" chapter of Zhuangzi: an empty boat bumps you and you do not get angry; you get angry only when someone is in the boat, but the bump is the same bump. That is an analogy, not evidence. If there is a real loss, use the legal path in section 8 and section 9. It is much cheaper than blowing up on the spot.

Sources · 2

1. Webb TL, Miles E, Sheeran P (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin. doi.org/10.1037/a0027600
2. Carlsmith KM, Wilson TD, Gilbert DT (2008). The paradoxical consequences of revenge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi.org/10.1037/a0012165