Apologies are remarkably effective at defusing anger.
Intuitively, this makes sense. But when you think about it, it is a little odd. Apologies don’t physically change your situation. Someone telling you sorry doesn’t provide any material benefit to your life.
Yet apologies work because they acknowledge your status and worth, affirming respect previously denied.
The fact that apologies work to defuse anger gives us a clue as to why anger evolved in the first place.
Anger is a built-in bargaining chip. It evolved as a specific adaptation—a tool used by our ancestors to get others to treat them better.
Anger serves as a way to communicate a clear message: “I’m not as weak as you think. You can’t treat me this way.”
From an evolutionary perspective, the primary goal of anger is to influence another person’s behavior or decisions, aiming to change how they perceive and treat us.
It’s important here to distinguish between two levels of understanding: the ultimate (or evolutionary) and the proximate explanations for anger. The proximate explanation addresses the immediate reasons we feel anger—perhaps we feel disrespected, belittled, or mistreated in some way.
But the ultimate/evolutionary explanation digs deeper, asking why emotions like anger evolved in humans at all. Why does disrespect or mistreatment activate feelings of anger? Why does being slighted feel painful?
Anger evolved because it offered benefits to our ancestors. This idea is known among evolutionary psychologists as the “recalibration theory of anger.”
Essentially, anger works to reset how others treat you. If you feel like you’re being ignored or treated unfairly, anger becomes a tool to demand better treatment from others.
Anger arises when we perceive threats to our well-being or opportunities, motivating others to provide better treatment. From a paper led by the psychologist Daniel Sznycer:
“Anger interfaces with the brain of the target of your anger (e.g., the person who imposed excessive costs on you) and feeds the target information. The subtext of this information is: Pay the cost of valuing me more highly (e.g., ‘Stop borrowing my clothes’), or I will exact an even higher cost from you.”
By expressing anger, our ancestors communicated their discontent, signaling to others that mistreatment could carry significant social costs. These displays aimed to secure vital resources, strengthen social status, forge alliances, and maintain romantic partnerships—factors directly linked to survival and reproductive success.
Interestingly, this process unfolds without conscious awareness.
You don’t consciously think to yourself, “This person is mistreating me. I’m going to get angry now in order to orchestrate a series of cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses aimed at incentivizing this other person to place more weight on my well-being.”
Emotions, including anger, are involuntary and automatic, which is why they are so effective. Conscious thought burns more calories than automated processes, so evolution streamlined most human desires and responses to operate unconsciously. The unconscious mind quietly solves problems for us, activating emotions to change how others view and treat us. Even when we have no direct awareness of this process.
Understanding anger in this way can help us handle conflicts better in our own lives.
When we get angry, we’re implicitly trying to influence others to change their behavior. For example, people naturally respond to anger by puffing up their chests, lifting their heads, and appearing physically stronger. These poses aren’t accidental; they’re designed to make others believe we are strong and capable of defending ourselves.
Anger can be expressed either by inflicting costs or withdrawing benefits, such as the “silent treatment.” Research indicates that angry men often express their displeasure through direct threats of aggression, while angry women are more likely to withdraw emotional
