Stop, drop and roll for anger: Brad Bushman says venting backfires
His TEDxOhioStateUniversity talk goes after the punching bag and the angry jog, and the first commenters are already pushing back on the jog.
TEDx Talks
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 46,787 views a day, 110 times a normal first day on this channel (427).
Anger management: What works and what doesn’t | Brad Bushman | TEDxOhioStateUniversity
Most new uploads on TEDx Talks start slowly. The channel posts a steady stream of talks from independently run events around the world, and a new one usually ends its first day with a few hundred views. Brad Bushman's talk from TEDxOhioStateUniversity passed 30,000 in its first eleven hours. The other talks posted the same day were still in the hundreds, or just past a thousand.
The subject may explain part of it. The description opens with the observation that anger management keeps coming out on top when people are asked what they want to work on. Then it goes after two favorite remedies: venting, and burning the anger off with exercise. According to the talk's summary, both raise arousal and feed the anger instead of draining it. Bushman's alternative borrows a fire-safety slogan, stop, drop and roll: pause, calm the body, then get on with the day.
Venting is familiar ground for him. Bushman, a professor in Ohio State's School of Communication, has studied aggression and violence for more than 30 years. His best-known experiment, published in 2002, gave insulted volunteers a punching bag, and those who used it were more aggressive afterward than those who simply sat quietly. The description adds that he served on President Obama's committee on gun violence and testified before Congress on youth violence.
The comments are few, but there are already more of them than on a usual first day here, and they argue with the premise. One viewer is surprised that jogging lands on the list of things that do not help, since a run feels like time to breathe and think. Another makes the case that anger is sometimes healthy, and that the trouble starts only when it comes too often.
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What viewers say
Do you “vent” to deal with anger?
@TEDxSee it on YouTubeI’m surprised jogging doesn’t help, I think of it as time to connect with your thoughts and your breath. Hmm!
@renie_rivasSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- TEDx Talks
- Subscribers
- 44,700,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 14,282,097
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,863,265 (on a normal day: 2,000,164)
- Video published
- October 6, 2026
- Video views so far
- 30,807 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 46,787
The numbers
For a channel whose new talks usually open with a few hundred views, this one started on a very different scale.
💡 Test your knowledge
Ohio State University, where Brad Bushman gave this talk, has its main campus in which city?
The Ohio State University's main campus is in Columbus, the state capital.
