This file photo shows people crossing a street in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, May 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The so-called ‘anger disorder’ is caused not only by personal or family factors including home chores or marital conflict, but also by structural factors like unfair treatment or gender discrimination, a study showed Monday.
‘Anger disorder’ refers to a chronic explosive disorder that is caused by accumulated negative emotions like anger. The term is used exclusively in South Korea and has no official medical terminology.
A paper recently published by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs analyzed 25 previous studies and 143 correlation data sets on anger disorder to deduce the magnitude of each factor’s influence on the disorder.
The study showed that, in addition to personal and family factors, social relationship factors like the belief that ‘the world is just’ (0.403), procedural fairness (0.340), distributive fairness (0.330), unjustness (0.480), gender discrimination (0.292) and gender role stereotypes (0.370) also have a significant impact on anger disorder.
Those who have a strong belief that the world is just and have optimistic views about fairness tend to be less exposed to the risk of anger disorder.
Those who have experienced gender discrimination and have stronger stereotypes about gender roles tend to be more prone to anger disorder.
“The unfair and unjust social structure of South Korea may be one of the primary causes of citizen anger,” the paper said.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
