Interpersonal scripts in the anger narratives told by clients in psychotherapy

In recent years, anger has been conceptualized as an interpersonal script. To investigate the different varieties of this script, 109 stories of angry experiences told by clients to their therapists were drawn from audiotapes of psychotherapy sessions. Phrases representing 5 features of a script (i.e., antecedents, beliefs and evaluations, self's expression of anger behavioral reactions of others, and the consequences) were extracted from each story, coded, and subjected to cluster analysis. Five clusters were identified: (1) Direct expression and receptive response, (2) Tit for tat, (3) Other tries to come through for self (4) No direct expression, and (5) Hostile confrontation over unmet expectations. Our results confirm what can be extrapolated from the literature as common scripts and draw attention to other less commonly described ones. The importance of understanding anger scripts as a dynamic interplay between self and other is emphasized.