“Hey, get out of the way!” screams an angry man on the streets of Manhattan.
“Watch where you’re going!” yells an infuriated woman to a car in her way.
These are classic scenes of road rage—but this kind of behavior isn’t just specific to drivers anymore, it also has been occurring more and more frequently among pedestrians and walkers.
It’s called sidewalk rage, and it’s real and widespread, and at its extreme, it could be “explosive” and could be a psychiatric disorder.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, researchers have been studying this phenomenon and have been concluding that there are certain factors at play that cause, and result from, sidewalk rage.
This type of rage doesn’t just occur on the sidewalk, however: it can happen in any public space where the perpetrator carries a wanton disregard for others by giving others the evil-eye, or yelling or bumping into others, for example.
Students, pedestrians, shoppers, and travelers alike can all exhibit sidewalk rage.
For example, more than 11,000 people on Facebook said they liked the statement “I hate when people walk really slow in the hallway at school.” More than 400,000 others are “hating it when people walk slow in front of you.”
And sidewalk rage could turn into violent contemplations: nearly 16,000 Facebookers have joined the group “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head.”
When people act out this rage, they can exhibit a psychiatric disorder called “intermittent explosive disorder (IED),” the Wall Street Journal reported.
A push, a shove, or an uttered expletive could be symptoms of this condition, which is “marked by episodes of unwarranted anger” and affects 16 million Americans, according to a 2006 report from the National Institute of Mental Health.
IED could be dangerous. People with the disorder “attack others and their possessions, causing bodily injury and property damage” and are at a higher risk of developing anxiety and depression, abusing drugs or alcohol.
For some researchers of sidewalk rage and IED, finding out what sparks the rage and how to treat these people’s anger issues are key to finding a solution to and better understanding the phenomenon.
“We’re trying to understand what makes people angry, what that experience is like,” Jerry Deffenbacher, a professor at Colorado State University and expert in anger, told the Journal. “For those for whom anger is a personal problem, we’re trying to develop and evaluate ways of helping them.”
“Watch where you’re going!” yells an infuriated woman to a car in her way.
These are classic scenes of road rage—but this kind of behavior isn’t just specific to drivers anymore, it also has been occurring more and more frequently among pedestrians and walkers.
It’s called sidewalk rage, and it’s real and widespread, and at its extreme, it could be “explosive” and could be a psychiatric disorder.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, researchers have been studying this phenomenon and have been concluding that there are certain factors at play that cause, and result from, sidewalk rage.
This type of rage doesn’t just occur on the sidewalk, however: it can happen in any public space where the perpetrator carries a wanton disregard for others by giving others the evil-eye, or yelling or bumping into others, for example.
Students, pedestrians, shoppers, and travelers alike can all exhibit sidewalk rage.
For example, more than 11,000 people on Facebook said they liked the statement “I hate when people walk really slow in the hallway at school.” More than 400,000 others are “hating it when people walk slow in front of you.”
And sidewalk rage could turn into violent contemplations: nearly 16,000 Facebookers have joined the group “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head.”
When people act out this rage, they can exhibit a psychiatric disorder called “intermittent explosive disorder (IED),” the Wall Street Journal reported.
A push, a shove, or an uttered expletive could be symptoms of this condition, which is “marked by episodes of unwarranted anger” and affects 16 million Americans, according to a 2006 report from the National Institute of Mental Health.
IED could be dangerous. People with the disorder “attack others and their possessions, causing bodily injury and property damage” and are at a higher risk of developing anxiety and depression, abusing drugs or alcohol.
For some researchers of sidewalk rage and IED, finding out what sparks the rage and how to treat these people’s anger issues are key to finding a solution to and better understanding the phenomenon.
“We’re trying to understand what makes people angry, what that experience is like,” Jerry Deffenbacher, a professor at Colorado State University and expert in anger, told the Journal. “For those for whom anger is a personal problem, we’re trying to develop and evaluate ways of helping them.”
