The Anger Monitor - Can anger change the world?

Learn how anger can be turned into energy for social change Image

The Anger Monitor

is a unique research tool that assesses the quantity and quality of anger levels in society, as well as anger trends to observe how it evolves over time. It is designed for campaign strategists, activists, and changemakers and combines audience research, cognitive science insights and recommendations.

Anger, even with its negative reputation, is a very powerful emotion that can make or break history. As we see more and more crises break out across the world, anger has become a prominent emotion in many modern societies. If we can understand and navigate this complex emotion in our audiences we can use its energy for the change we want to create.

  • FRANCE
  • UK
  • POLAND

FRANCE

FRANCE

ROUND 1: JANUARY 2023

Anger Index: 7.4

What does this mean?

Key findings

  • France’s anger culture is split between anger introverts and anger extroverts.
  • Over half of the country feels angry about the cost of living crisis with anger highest amongst 25 - 34 year olds, those with Very Conservative views, while Women tended to be angrier than men.
  • Alongside anger, anxiety and powerlessness are the dominating emotions most French people feel about the crisis.
  • French people mostly blame the government and the Oil & Gas Industry for the cost of living crisis but perhaps surprisingly over half also blame the EU.

Discover the insights paper here.

Discover the full French data here.

Jump to our anger recommendations.

UK

FRANCE

ROUND 1: JANUARY 2023

Anger Index: 7.4

What does this mean?

Key findings

  • The UK’s anger culture leans towards anger introverts and anger extroverts.
  • Over half of the country feels angry about the cost of living crisis with anger highest amongst 45 - 54 year olds and those with Very Liberal views
  • Alongside anger, the UK showed the highest levels of Frustration and Sadness of all three countries.
  • The data showed a strong negative correlation between anger and the perception of anger (greater anger is linked to a lack of agency) and two thirds felt angry about the crisis because they felt powerless
  • There is a strong sense of injustice around the crisis with over half feeling the burden of the cost of living crisis is not being shared equally

Discover the insights paper here.

Discover the full UK data here.

Jump to our anger recommendations.

POLAND

FRANCE

ROUND 1: JANUARY 2023

Anger Index: 7.4

What does this mean?

Key findings

  • Polish society leans towards anger extroverts and has the highest number of aggressive anger responses with 39% of people also agreeing that people need to express their anger in more aggressive forms such as violent protests
  • 54% felt quite or very angry about the crisis with the 18-24 age bracket being the angriest age group
  • While Russia was the primary actor of blame, anger towards the government remained high and over half said their anger towards national politics had grown over the past year
  • Poland is polarised with 39% of people blaming people who elected the government for the crisis

Discover the insights paper here.

Discover the full Polish data here.

Jump to our anger recommendations.

Anger Campaigning Recommendations

While this study was done in Europe, Anger is rising everywhere. A very prolonged COVID-19 crisis and consecutive socioeconomic challenges have pushed societies across to the edge. While it makes campaigning and advocating for any cause unpredictable, it also gives you an opportunity to use it as a tool for change. Mindworks has created an Anger Handbook containing or main recommendations for campaigning on anger under four main headings:

Ignite anger – creating anger in your audience

Modulate anger – either fuelling or restraining social anger

Direct anger – creating an object of blame towards which the anger can be targeted.

Unleash anger – providing opportunities for people to turn their anger into action

Download The Anger Handbook

Read the Scientific Insights behind the Handbook

FAQs

During the ‘Disillusionment’ phase of a crisis (find out more about The Crisis Timeline here), anger and frustration are the most dominant emotions that build up in societies. They can result in polarisation, civil unrest and the decline of social trust. But when channelled well, anger is a powerful social energy that can motivate and drive system change.

As a pilot project, the UK, Poland and France offered an ideal starting point for the Monitor. All three countries have distinctive socio-cultural characteristics whereby anger is expressed in different ways and all three are both enduring the impact of the cost-of-living crisis. At the same time, Poland offers a valuable comparison considering its geographical proximity to the war and crisis. As well as continuing to monitor anger in these countries, we hope to expand our Anger Monitor to other countries to gain more insights.

Mindworks partnered with international polling company Critical Research to conduct online interviews with n=500 French adults. Interviews were conducted online from a panel of potential respondents. All respondents qualified for the survey. The survey was scripted and hosted by Critical Research and was available to complete online using any device of the respondent’s choosing. The questionnaire was designed by Mindworks. Invitations were issued to potential respondents and completed interviews verified and quality checked by Critical Research. It has a minimum confidence level of 95% and a maximum margin of error 5%).

To carry out the survey work Mindworks partnered with Critical Research, a full service Market Research agency based in central and north west London locations, conducting both qualitative and quantitative research.

All of our questionnaires and data is available for free for you to explore, build on and use as you wish. You can download the survey questionnaire here and the datasets here. We will also be building on this to offer explorable data dashboard in the future.

If you would be interested in helping to fund the anger monitor or to run one in your country then please get in touch with us at nuri@mindworkslab.org

The number of “angry” people in a country is not sufficient to measure the level of social anger. We created the Anger Index to take into account a range of weighted factors to create a more comprehensive measure of anger in one country. You can find our full calculation and method here.

Along with our reputed research partners, we select a representative sample of 500 people from each country to interview for the Anger Monitor survey. We analyze, derive insights and turn them into applicable insights drawing from our expertise around disruption and human minds.

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