The anger monitor — Can anger change the world?
Learn how anger can be turned into energy for social change.
Anger is a powerful and often misunderstood emotion that can make or break history. This is especially true in today’s crisis-driven world. If we can understand this complex emotion in our audiences we can use its energy to catalyse individual or collective action.
The anger monitor
is a journey that empowers changemakers to understand and use social anger in their campaigns. It consists of a survey to determine the quality and quantity of anger in different countries and how it shifts over time. We combine this with data orientation, cognitive science insights and actionable recommendations.
The Monitor aims to level the playing field on anger, an emotion commonly exploited by the political right, to make it more understandable and accessible for changemakers and movements that work on environmental and social justice.
Anger in the cost-of-living crisis
- FRANCE
- UK
- POLAND
FRANCE
FRANCE
ROUND 1: JANUARY 2023
Anger Index: 3
Key findings
- France’s anger culture leans towards extroverted
- Over half (57%) of the country feels angry about the cost of living crisis with anger highest amongst 25 – 34 year olds and those with Very Conservative views, while Women tended to be angrier than men.
- The majority (69%) of French people said they felt powerless about the cost of living crisis.
- Over three quarters (79%) felt their anger would fade when they feel more secure about their country’s future.
- French people mostly blame the government (66%) and the Oil & Gas industry (66%) for the cost of living crisis while over half (56%) blame the EU.
Download the full French insights paper
Download the raw French data.
Explore French questionnaires here.
Interested in learning what to do with this data and how to campaign on anger in France?
FRANCE
UK
ROUND 1: JANUARY 2023
Anger Index: 11.5
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
Download the full UK insights paper
Download the raw UK data.
Interested in learning what to do with this data and how to campaign on anger in France?
FRANCE
POLAND
Phase 1: JANUARY 2023
Anger Index: 1.1
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
Download the full Poland insights paper
Download the raw Poland data..
Explore Polish questionnaires here.
Interested in learning what to do with this data and how to campaign on anger in France?
The anger handbook
Mindworks has created the Anger Handbook to give you actionable tools and recommendations on how to use social anger in your work. This Handbook is highly relevant whether you are working in one of the three countries or in another context. The Handbook consists of two parts, the first as an overview of the science behind social anger and the second as a practical toolkit built around our four anger modules:
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 Understand our SEM Model
FAQs
Why are you working on anger?
Why did you choose the UK, Poland and France?
Who ran the survey?
What was the methodology?
Can I see or use the questions or the data?
I’d be interested in running an Anger Monitor in my country, what can I do?
What is the anger index?
Why are you working on anger?
Anger is a powerful and often misunderstood emotion that can motivate people to take individual or collective action. It is known as the “political emotion” – a social energy that, when well channelled, can catalyse systemic change. The Anger Monitor aims to level the playing field on anger, an emotion often exploited by the political right, to make it more understandable and accessible for movements that work on environmental and social justice.
Why did you choose the UK, Poland and France?
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.
Who ran the survey?
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.
What was the methodology?
Mindworks partnered with international polling company Critical Research to conduct online interviews with n=500 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%).
Can I see or use the questions or the data?
All of our questionnaires and data is available for free for you to explore, and use and you can download the survey questionnaire and the datasets here. For example, you can use our questionnaire to analyse the anger of a specific audience you want to work with or a different geographic area (another country or a specific town). We will also be building on this to offer explorable data dashboard in the future. As we all can learn best if we can learn from an increasing variety of data, we would invite everybody who is using our questionnaire or is further analysing our data to share their information with the community (we are also happy to publish it on our website).
I’d be interested in running an Anger Monitor in my country, what can I do?
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
What is the anger index?
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.
Watch our webinars
Anger to Action webinar - Poland
Anger to Action webinar - France
