Anger, agency, risk and action: A neurobehavioral model with proof-of-concept in healthy young adults

Abstract

Anger can engender action by individuals and groups. It is thus important to understand anger behavioral phenotypes and their underlying neural substrates. Here we introduce a novel neurobehavioral construct that we term agentic anger, a state that motivates action to achieve risky goals, and test predictions of the model in two proof-of-concept studies. In study 1 we used the Incentive Balloon Analogue Risk Task to evaluate subjective states of: a) negative activation (NA) to assess agentic anger in response to frustrative non-reward, and b) positive activation (PA) to assess exuberance to achieved reward in 39 healthy young adult volunteers. Task-induced NA correlated with task-induced PA (r=0.56, p<.001), risk-taking on the task (r=0.27 to 0.36, p≤.05, .01) and trait Social Potency (SP, r=0.34 to 0.35, p<.05), a measure of reward sensitivity on the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Brief-Form. Study 2 evaluated within-subject functional MRI response to incentives in 10 males receiving 20 mg d-amphetamine or placebo (total 20 scans), providing data on ventral striatal reactivity to stepped incentives during catecholamine activation. Trait SP (r=+.60, p=.03) and task-induced PA (r=+.72, p=.02) strongly predicted amphetamine-facilitated BOLD response in the right nucleus accumbens, a region involved in action selection. Task-induced NA exhibited large effects with trait SP (r=0.51; d=1.2) and induced PA (r=0.68; d=1.9), replicating Study 1. These findings inform the phenomenology and neurobiology of agentic anger, a state that facilitates voluntary approach toward rewards that entail risk. Neural mechanisms of anger, exuberance and risk-taking in healthy individuals are discussed, with implications for action, decision-making, social justice and behavior change.