Race and anger: GSS respondents were asked three questions about anger: 1) how many days in the past week were you angry at someone; 2) how intense was the anger, and 3) how long did the anger last? The alpha coefficient for the three measures is .53. I converted the scores on each question to z scores and summed them, creating an index.


Mean anger index (N = 1,110)

Blacks .56
Whites .02


Whites are significantly less angry than blacks at the 95% confidence level. The difference between the two means is 25% of one standard deviation.

A study of twins calculated heritabilities for the angry-hostility sub-scale of the NEO: .52 for Canadians, .52 for Germans, and .40 for Japanese (Jang et al. 2001. Covariance structure of neuroticism and agreeableness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 295-304.)

Variables: ANGRY, HOWANGRY, ANGRLAST