1Anger and doubt cannot really occupy the same moment. Anger sharpens everything to a point, and a genuine maybe blunts it.
This is why an honest question does more than an argument. Not a challenge, which hardens things, but a real one: what if I have got part of this wrong. If you can hold that for a second and actually mean it, you will usually feel the heat drop a little, because the certainty propping it up has gone soft.
Islamic evidence
His arrogance leads him to sin (Quran 2:206). The verse traces a sequence anyone in a row will recognise: a person is corrected, the pride will not take it, and the pride carries them onward.
“When he is told, ‘Beware of God,’ his arrogance leads him to sin. Hell is enough for him: a dreadful resting place”
Qur'an 2:206
Psychological evidence
In a brain imaging experiment, people who were insulted and then prompted to dwell on it showed activity in a region of the cingulate cortex that tracked both their reported anger and how aggressive they generally were. That supports anger being an actively maintained state rather than a passing spark, and something maintained can be interrupted. Whether deliberately introducing doubt is what interrupts it has not been tested this way.
Denson TF, Pedersen WC, Ronquillo J, Nandy AS. (2009). Journal of cognitive neuroscience · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Anger needs to be sure, so anything that makes you genuinely unsure takes some of its fuel away.
Feedback
none yet2Your mind is always slightly behind what is happening. Reality moves and you are the response, which leaves you permanently a step late and permanently not quite sure.
Put that way, uncertainty is not a flaw in your thinking, it is the position you are standing in. You are flying into the next moment without having seen it yet. There is a strange comfort in that, and it takes some of the shame out of being wrong, which is one of the things anger is usually protecting you from.
Islamic evidence
God knows what they conceal and what they reveal (Quran 16:23). Complete knowledge is placed with God, which quietly concedes that yours is partial.
“There is no doubt that God knows what they conceal and what they reveal. He does not love the arrogant”
Qur'an 16:23
Psychological evidence
In a pharmacological challenge study, physiological levels of testosterone rapidly increased how strongly the brain reacted to threat cues in healthy men, and a small placebo controlled study of twelve participants found a similar rise in responsiveness to social threat. Both point at threat processing running fast and early, ahead of anything deliberate. Both were small and involved giving men a hormone, so they say nothing about anybody's ordinary Tuesday.
Goetz SM, Tang L, Thomason ME, Diamond MP, Hariri AR, Carré JM. (2014). Biological psychiatry · doi
Hermans EJ, Ramsey NF, van Honk J. (2008). Biological psychiatry · doi
Review detail
Why it works. You cannot be certain about something you are still catching up with.
Feedback
none yet3Not understanding what is happening frightens a person before it angers them. If you flare up when a situation is unclear, you are meeting something very old in yourself rather than a fault you invented.
Watch the order of it next time. First the blank, the not knowing what this means or where it is going, then a tightening in the chest or jaw, then the sharp words. Naming the fear underneath does not make the situation any clearer, but it stops you treating your own heat as proof that someone has wronged you.
Islamic evidence
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these (Quran 17:36). Fear fills a gap with a guess, and this is a gentle instruction not to act on the guess as though you already knew.
“Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these”
Qur'an 17:36
Psychological evidence
A review of anger from a cognitive neuroscience angle describes reactive aggression as coming out of a basic threat system in the brain, involving the amygdala, hypothalamus and periaqueductal gray, rather than being a strategy a person selects. It is a review of existing work, not a single decisive study, so take it as a way of organising the picture rather than a measurement of you. What it does support is the ordinary experience that the reaction lands before the thinking does.
Blair RJR. (2012). Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Fear is a faster and older reaction than working things out, so anger in an unclear moment is often that fear arriving first.
When not to. If the not knowing brings a fear that will not settle at all, or old danger comes back with it, that is worth taking to someone trained rather than sitting with alone.