"Stupidity" or acting stupid is doing something illogical which neither benefits you nor anyone else and might even be harmful. How often do we call each other stupid on a daily basis? Quite often, but sometimes doing something really stupid can have serious implications. According to Cipolla's fundamental laws of stupidity "A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or a group of people without experiencing personal gain or even worse-causing damage to themselves in the process." That being said, its not all that difficult to provoke someone to do the stupidest things. Making a person act without thinking is all we need to do. And what better way to do this than make them angry?

       

Anger is an emotion in which a person experiences intense feelings of displeasure as a result of being threatened or harmed. An angry person's body also releases adrenaline causing a response similar to fight or flight because as a person's personal boundaries are violated , they would immediately want to reestablish themselves. Hence, an angry person lacks observability and self control, often causing an error of judgement which leads to a person doing stupid stuff which they will probably regret later.

       

Anger can be for self preservation, as a result of deliberate unfair treatment. In mild cases, it is simply due to the person's characteristic traits. All these situations correspond to a person being restricted or threatened. An incident demonstrating how such emotions lead to people making irrational, hasty decisions is- Getting into medical college, all my friends were happy save one.

 

Her reason? She wanted to pursue genetics . Apparently,while discussing her potential career options with different people, she was told that she shouldn't pursue medicine as "girls are not allowed to study that much". And that was that. It made her angry and landed her here. Though she deserves an applause for shutting up the sexists, her rational thought process should have been that proving a group of sexists wrong was not as important as her passion, her dream.

      

Anger is not always negative. It is also the force that drives people to stand up against something wrong happening and demand change. However, misdirected and uncontrollable anger can be extremely detrimental to a person. Many times people use anger as a mask, an outward expression when they are emotionally disturbed. For example, a person in grief who cannot make sense of why a tragedy happened with him, resorts to anger. This anger is misplaced, directed even towards the loved ones of a person. In extreme cases, a person may drive away all those who mattered to them in their angry state of mind. People use anger as a coping mechanism many times.  But things go wrong when people start being aggressive, answering to the "damaging" part of Cipolla's laws of stupidity.

      

Anger has been associated with certain harmful behaviour like obsessive behaviour, self blame, resorting to bullying to show one's dominance, hurting others and also violence in extreme cases. People involved in public acts of aggression often have their agenda based on misplaced anger and blame.

     

So, on a lighter note if you want to provoke someone to do something stupid, simply make them angry. Mock them that they are incapable of doing something and they'll be quick to prove you wrong. Anger is a strong emotion and excess of anything is always toxic. People are the most stupid when they act on impulse, without thought just to satisfy their current state of mind. Anger management techniques and better coping mechanisms will always help to prevent getting burned by the flame of our own fire.