Anger is a harmful negative emotion. It is injurious to both personal life and work life.
- (a)Discuss how it leads to negative emotions and undesirable behaviours.
- (b)How can it be managed and controlled ?
Approach · directive: “discuss / how can”
What it asks · (a) Show how anger breeds other negative emotions and harmful behaviour; (b) explain practical ways to manage and control it.
It asks 2 things — answer each
- (a) Discuss how anger leads to negative emotions and undesirable behaviour
- (b) Explain how anger can be managed and controlled
Open with · The Bhagavad Gita (2.63): anger leads to 'clouding of judgment' and, once the intellect is destroyed, ruin; natural against threat or injustice, unmanaged anger harms the person and everyone around.
Cover
- (a) A flowchart traces the Gita's chain (2.62-63): attachment, desire, anger, clouded judgement, ruin.
- (a) Emotional chain: anger held in becomes resentment and hatred, anger let out brings guilt and anxiety; retaliation restarts the cycle.
- (a) Behaviour and health: shouting, abuse, bullying, road rage and domestic violence; stress and high blood pressure.
- (a) Personal and work life: frightened families and isolation; humiliated staff, bad news suppressed, teams fractured, citizens treated as adversaries.
- (b) Immediate control: self-awareness of triggers (emotional intelligence), a pause before any order or reply, empathetic reframing, calm assertion.
- (b) Lasting habits: exercise, yoga, meditation, sleep, counselling for chronic anger, and workplaces that resolve conflict early.
Close with · Aristotle: anger must never undermine reason and should be felt 'in the right way at the right times'; mastered, anger at injustice becomes steady energy for fair action.
Add value (verified)
- Bhagavad Gita 2.62: contemplating sense objects breeds attachment, attachment breeds desire, and desire breeds anger.Bhagavad Gita 2.62, tr. Swami Mukundananda — holy-bhagavad-gita.org ↗“While contemplating on the objects of the senses, one develops attachment to them. Attachment leads to desire, and from desire arises anger.”
- Bhagavad Gita 2.63: anger clouds judgement, bewilders memory and destroys the intellect, and one is ruined.Bhagavad Gita 2.63, tr. Swami Mukundananda — holy-bhagavad-gita.org ↗“Anger leads to clouding of judgment, which results in bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, the intellect gets destroyed; and when the intellect is destroyed, one is ruined.”
- Aristotle: anger should never reach the point at which it undermines reason.Aristotle's Ethics — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗“Aristotle is committed to saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of the extreme point at which we would lose control.”
- Aristotle held that common passions such as anger are sometimes appropriate, and that people must learn to master them and feel them in the right way at the right times.Aristotle's Ethics — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ↗“Aristotle assumes, on the contrary, not simply that these common passions are sometimes appropriate, but that it is essential that every human being learn how to master them and experience them in the right way at the right times.”
- Kautilya: restraint of the senses requires abandoning six enemies: lust, anger, greed, vanity, haughtiness and overjoy (Arthashastra, Book I, Ch. VI).Kautilya's Arthashastra, tr. R. Shamasastry (full text, Internet Archive) ↗“RESTRAINT of the organs of sense, on which success in study and discipline depends can be enforced by abandoning lust, anger, greed, vanity (mdna), haughtiness (mada), and overjoy (harsha).”
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2016, GS Paper IV — paper ↗. Approach: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify) — UPSC publishes no model answers. ·
Model answer· 220words · Minimalist IAS
"Anger leads to clouding of judgment," warns the Bhagavad Gita (2.63); once the intellect is destroyed, "one is ruined". Natural against threat or injustice, unmanaged anger harms the person and everyone around.
(a) How anger breeds negative emotions and undesirable behaviour
- Attachment
- Desire
- Anger
- Clouded judgement
- Ruin
- Emotional chain: anger held in hardens into resentment and hatred; anger let out brings guilt and anxiety; retaliation restarts the cycle.
- Behaviour: shouting, abuse, bullying, road rage and domestic violence; stress and high blood pressure follow.
- Personal life: outbursts frighten children and silence a spouse, leaving the angry person isolated.
- Work life: an angry officer humiliates staff, so bad news stops reaching him; teams fracture and citizens become adversaries.
(b) How anger can be managed and controlled
- Self-awareness: recognise triggers and early signs, the base of emotional intelligence.
- Pause: breathe, count or step away; never sign an order or send a reply in anger.
- Reframe with empathy: see the other side, separate the person from the problem, and state concerns calmly.
- Discipline and support: exercise, yoga, meditation and sleep; counselling where anger is chronic; workplaces that resolve conflict early.
Aristotle held that anger must never undermine reason, and that people must learn to feel it "in the right way at the right times". Mastered, anger at injustice becomes steady energy for fair action.
Prepared by Minimalist IAS to the answer standard of Shivam Singh (mentor, 7 years) · facts checked against official sources (how we verify) · updated 1 Oct 2026. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.
