Venting verbal hostility increases rather than reduces subsequent aggression.

Evidence

Similarly, Allport’s ideas about how antilocutions can produce either an escalation or an attenuation of negative feelings and behavior have not been directly tested empirically in the intervening 50 years since the publication of The Nature of Prejudice. In a peripherally relevant study, Loew (1967) showed that participants trained to speak aggressive verbs during a learning task delivered more extreme electric shocks to a peer. While these results seem to disconfirm the notion of catharsis in the expression of hostility, the target of hostility in Loew’s study was explicitly not an ethnic outgroup member, and the aggressive verbs were explicitly not ethnophaulisms. Nevertheless, these results suggest that intergroup hostility is exacerbated, and not cathartically ameliorated, by the use of antilocutions. More generally, “releasing” aggression has been shown to increase, not to decrease, subsequent aggression (Bushman, 2002). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1276

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the catharsis myth literature, e.g. the shaking-anger-out research (Bushman) commonly cited in pop-psych debunkings.
• DEEPTHINKING: Refutes a core folk psychology assumption (‘get it off your chest’) that still shapes therapy rhetoric and internet culture, with a 50-year empirical gap at its core.
• SEED: Article angle: why the ‘catharsis’ myth persists in wellness culture despite consistent evidence that venting amplifies aggression.