Construction & Standardization of Anger Scale: Validation with the help of EEG

Anger is a natural emotion which involves a strong uncomfortable and emotional response to a perceived provocation. Mild anger motivates an individual to take appropriate action in many areas of life. When anger goes beyond an optimal level it not only causes physical harm and psychological harm but it also intrudes with achievement of higher level of consciousness. In order to measure and compare anger among individuals a need for construction of anger scale was realized. Therefore, the researcher tried to construct a scale which could measure anger among individuals. Items with low coefficient of correlation (r= .14 or less) were discarded and finally 30 items with r= .15 to .67 were retained in the final test. Thus, internal consistency of Anger Scale was established. Test Retest Reliability of the scale (with a time gap of 25 days) came out to be .86. For establishing criterion validity, scores on Anger Scale were correlated with scores of well being. High negative coefficient of correlation of anger scores with well being indicated that higher the anger lower is the level of well being among individuals. The coefficient of correlation was found to be -.85. Again criterion validity was supported by significant positive relationship between egotism and anger also. The coefficient of correlation was .65. It shows that as the egotism increases the level of anger increases and vice versa. Validity of anger scale was established with the help of scores on EEG. The mean alpha waves of higher anger group were found to decrease significantly when subjects’ anger was experimentally aroused. On the other hand Mean EEG scores of low anger group as measured by the Anger Scale did not change significantly. Thus, the validity of anger scale was experimentally established.