Yeah, that's not actually true. "Letting your anger out" makes you angrier.
Why? Because if anger becomes socially acceptable, you're more likely to express it. However, saying everyone should bottle it up is trying to take an extreme and apply it to everyone.
Anger is an emotional response to a situation, much like depression. If you don't change your situation, you will become angrier or more depressed. If this "venting" makes someone feel better, and prolongs their stay in this bad situation, then of course they're going to get angrier.
This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes.
So suppressing that anger is going to promote you to resolve the situation rather than tolerate it.
I'll point out that you're linking to a blog post and not a peer reviewed study, so the actual merit is zip without sources, which he provides none.
I however, would like to provide an analogy that is well studied. Porn. The availability of pornography is a well known reducer in rates of both rape and violence against women. Enacting the fantasy - Aristotle's method - IS a proven way to release sexual frustration and thus reduces the resulting violence. At least as far as the general population is concerned.
However, overconsumption of porn is linked with a progressive increase in aggression against women, decreased sympathy to rape victims, etc. Although, this is a chicken and egg issue is the porn delaying the persons aggression or causing it. Basically is porn preventing men from becoming Jack the Ripper, or is it causing them. We don't know because all we have is a correlation between overconsumption of porn and increasing violence.
To put it simply, for the average person "venting" their anger in a healthy way is going to be beneficial if their situation isn't producing the anger but an isolated incident did: your hot water heater rusted through, you've got a new one now but you're pissed about the flood. Getting that anger out is going to be beneficial if you do it in a healthy way (go to the batting cages or driving range and hit some balls). It's the same as porn, your girlfriend went away for two weeks over christmas to see her parents is a very different mental state compared to someone who's watching porn to see women have the shit beat out of them.
To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!
I don't think it's just social. In general, "X, then I Y and it feels good" reinforces behavior Y when I do it. Neurons are trained over time, and your brain works differently. My understanding is that studies have supported this regarding "venting" in general, but have not shown this particularly with violent video games (which means likely you're not "venting" at all, really, by playing games).
"This is like someone who's depressed because they're in an abusive relationship taking antidepressants rather than leaving the relationship. You're treating symptoms, not dealing with causes."
Causes should be dealt with, but venting is not necessarily dealing with causes - whether I go play video games or slink off and punch a pillow or whatever. Even when venting has some effect on causes (my demonstration of anger is observable and so you notice there's actually a problem, and hopefully we deal with it) it's not likely to be the best way to deal with it.
'To me, it's looking at the chicken and the egg problem and saying "oh my god, eggs cause more eggs! Let's get rid of all the eggs." It's wholly naive. If you don't want eggs, just get rid of the god damn chicken!'
If you do a good job getting rid of all the eggs, time will get rid of the chickens. If getting rid of eggs is easier or seen as more ethical or whatever, it may well be the right approach to wiping out chickens. (Actually, as I recall it's been pretty effective - DDT put a few species on the endangered species list by thinning their egg shells).
Personally I have had problems much bigger than what I can handle and as a passive aggressive personality my mind's response is to simply ignore many problems which are otherwise very serious, which has led me into even bigger problems and on the edge of depression. But when I do happen to let my anger out, an interesting thing happens - I take steps to solve those problems, because vetting in itself can also be acknowledgement that you do have a problem in need of a fix.
That's why I don't like the study outlined, because like many other studies of psychology, it's very, very shallow and has a problem with causality.
Also, be mindful about the studies you read about. Before believing anything, be mindful about the science, the methodology behind it. For example if you take a look in the last 60 years, you'll probably discover hundreds of flawed studies on nutrition and cholesterol based on which medical personnel in all countries have been spreading myths as some sort of gospel.
or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it.
I think you can see it at different levels even on the other side of the medal. I think customer care Americans experience is stellare compared to Europe on average, because Europeans hardly will blame enough the service supplier even when it is the case and this would result in raising the level of service. Apple was one of the first companies to provide US customer service here and at first I and my friends were pretty surprised that this was possible at all.
As with everything I guess this is just a bias and everywhere there are people of all the kinds, but because of culture there are some biases. Like, sicilians can be the most honest often, but surely on average my island exhibits a bias for not being able to stay in line, park the car where it is not possible and so forth. Basically I'm not generalizing.
But I would agree that the concept that something you do is someone else's fault is wrong. If anything, accepting that idea leads to daft warning messages on everything, eg. mats on the Land Rover Freelander dashboard for putting stuff with massive warnings reading "Don't put hot drinks here!". It is obvious, but they felt the need to put it there in case someone blamed them for their action of putting a roasting hot drink there and then accelerating swiftly. It's silly.
I had a professor visiting from the U.S. and he was absolutely in love with the culture in Europe - how we sort of accept more responsibility.
He told me he would choose building a business in europe vs. the U.S. every single time. He has been sued several times for the most ridiculous things that never would have held any ground over here.
That, he said, was the single best thing about Europe's business culture. Not sure if I agree with that, but he has a point.
funny addendum: he was surprised at the lack of disclaimers on products here. Go figure.
While like European way better, it is not fair to compare lawsuits prevalence in isolation. You have to compare the combination of lawsuits and regulations to say which system is better. And Europe has more regulations about a lot of things.
Not a "just how Americans think" issue, a "what is relevant to our readers' lives" issue.
That's absolutely not the case in other places of the world. In some cases, even the opposite problem arises (that is, discriminating against your own country/culture and favouring a foreign one)
(To note, the article wasn't about American culture, it was a personal interest piece on a person who was unprepared for the effects of the success he experienced.)
If by "other places in the world" you mean areas that are small enough or have an ephemeral-enough regional identity to have developed strong codependent identities with other regions, then I would certainly agree.
Living in a number of places has shown me that, in larger countries/communities with defined identities, internally facing publications will publish stories that are strongly relevant to their reader.
Because, as I said, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend that sort of space on an article that wasn't relevant to the reader.
Cultural diversity (and exceptionalism, etc) is all rolled into the DNA of the country.
My thinking is that many of the people who are really passionate about making games have somewhat addictive personalities. I.e. there are some people who would just never stay up 'till 3 am playing a game when there's something more "important" to do, whereas game creators have turned this flaw into a virtue (and a career).
EDIT> I love games, and I have a great job making games, but I'm 38 and I now realize that I spent way too much time playing games in my 20's. While it is a matter of self-control, I do have some guilt that some kid is going to fail their Compilers exam because they'd rather play computer games instead of studying, like me circa 1995.
Probably this is representative only of a minority, but from the outside this looks like a vocal minority, and even a very small minority, if can feel offended, or addicted, or something else because of your work, can easily turn your work into a nightmare.
Now the thing is: it is not true. You, with your work, are not forcing anyone. We live in a world full of possibilities, the problem here is, to be able to critically analyze what you do, otherwise there is no thing that can save you, you'll misuse even the simpler things to cause yourself some kind of problems.
There is more, even controversial things have some very good impact on the life of people making judicious use of those things. Example: a violent game can be a way to express violence of an otherwise repressed person, or some other people that is having a few bad weeks, is finding an escape playing at it. Similarly alcool, that if abused can be bad, addicting, and destroy people, is the joy of many people having a glass of wine from time to time, and so forth.
Most of the times the problem is not the tool but the user.