Why Slow Internet and Traffic Jams Make You Upset

Slow internet connections and slow traffic are not such a big deal in general. Then why does it infuriate us almost instantly? According to the neuroscientist, this is why we break down and how we break out of it.

If you have ever quickly lost your composure and “broke”, then it turns out that you are a completely normal person. Neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields, senior researcher at the National Institutes of Health and author of Why We Break Down: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain , suggests that there are nine major triggers that cause our brains to move from zero to 60 on the highway of anger. … Each trigger has to do with how our brains are wired to survive, even when it comes to trivial things like internet and 110 traffic. Fields explains to Melissa Dahl of The Science of Us:

This is an S trigger, and S means stopped . You have been stopped – as if you are being held back. And whenever an animal is restrained, it reacts aggressively to free itself. He will bite off his hand if he falls into the trap. And people will do the same … But here’s the key: your internet connection is slow or you’re stuck in traffic. Why are you suddenly angry, flaming with anger, instead of some other human emotion, for example, terribly bored? This is because anger [is] to prepare you for the fight. That’s what it’s for. This trigger went off to prepare you for battle because you are trapped.

Your sudden rage comes from being cornered. Slow internet means you can’t get work done in a timely manner (or can’t watch cat videos without waiting for them to intensify), and getting stuck in traffic is a literal form of being trapped, even though you know well down you will get out of it relatively soon … So what can you do? Fields continues:

… as soon as you know this – you’re on the internet and nothing is loading and you start to get annoyed – if you just think, ” Oh, I’m mad about the S trigger,” it just goes away. You understand that kicking the screen will not solve this problem.

Stop and give yourself time to understand that you are not in danger, you are just annoyed. If you want to keep from a fit of anger, you need to take a deep breath and return to reality . The entire article is worth reading, so follow the link below to find out more.

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