Brain snaps are fiction, the real issue is control

SO-CALLED ''brain snaps'' - as demonstrated by Timana Tahu - are a convenient fiction, say psychologists, and anyone who is motivated to do so can learn to overcome a tendency to anger.
The Parramatta centre's on-field meltdown on Monday, in which he went wild and committed a reckless high tackle within minutes of the start of the Eels' match against Newcastle in the NRL, has earned him a possible four- to five-week suspension.
Tahu rationalised the outburst as an element of his aggressive playing style. But sports psychologist Gareth Mole said the conflation of aggression with success in sport was a fallacy. ''In rugby league it's useful to have an amount of aggression, but way, way below'' that exhibited by Tahu, he said. ''Saying, 'I'm just an aggressive person,' is absolute garbage … the key word is control. Do you want to control your aggression or be a victim of your own aggressive impulses?''

Mr Mole, the head of sport psychology at Condor Performance in Sydney, said, ''A brain snap scientifically doesn't exist'' and when people reported physical sensations of being overcome by anger, they were actually describing the experience of overwhelming emotion.
High testosterone levels - more common among young, physically developed men - were biologically linked to aggressive tendencies, Mr Mole said, but had no bearing on the ability to master anger.
Most sporting codes emphasised physical and technical preparation at the expense of giving elite players the necessary mental skills to stay focused under extreme stress, Mr Mole said. ''Rugby league is particularly guilty in this regard,'' he said, as they rarely employed qualified psychologists who could help players calibrate aggression in line with the demands of their sport.
Tom Denson, a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of NSW, said players' public tantrums did not inevitably mean there was a problem in the code: ''One thing we would need to know is are rugby league players more angry than other people of that age and physical build?'' he said.
About half of a person's tendency towards aggression was inherited, Dr Denson said, but the rest resulted from social conditioning, and people could learn to overcome the impulse to lash out. He said self-control training could help people inhibit their aggression, even if the training was not related to anger.
In the US, brain scientists had shown that after two weeks right-handed people who trained themselves to use their left hand for some tasks were less likely to fly off the handle, Dr Denson said.
His own experiments have used magnetic resonance imaging to picture people's brains while they are being made furious by attempting an impossible task.
Those who remonstrated exhibited less activity in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with emotion regulation.