The following is a quote from Top Dog, by Bronson and Merryman.
To find an athlete's Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning, sports psychologists ask athletes to recall their emotional states during their best performances ever and their worst performances ever. In those interviews--often compiled for scholarly analysis--it's intriguing how frequently athletes report that their best performances were produced when [they] were feeling angry, vengeful, or resentful.
When talking about anger, it's necessary to distinguish between "trait" anger and "situational" anger. The former is when someone is prone to anger all the time--definitely unhealthy. But situational anger is quite different. People who respond with anger to a confrontation have higher emotional intelligence scores while ranking higher in life satisfaction and greater well-being.
Situational anger is triggered by a disconnect between what ought to happen and what haws happened; it's what you feel when your goals are blocked by someone who has improperly thwarted you. There's a sense of injustice in the ingredients for anger. The other crucial ingredient that sparks anger is that you feel you can do something about the injustice: there's a sliver of empowerment, a sense that you still have a fighting chance to change the situation, right the wrong. Without that chance, you're blocked, which leads to despair, not anger.
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