Cognitive-relaxation and social skills interventions in the treatment of general anger.

Social skill and cognitive-relaxation interventions for general-anger reduction were compared with a no-treatment control in a pretreatment, posttreatment, and 5-week-follow-up design. By follow-up, treatment groups reported significantly less general anger, lowered tendencies to suppress or exhibit general anger, and lowered state anger and greater constructive coping in an analogue provocation than did the control group. Cognitive-relaxation subjects reported significantly less personal-situational anger than did control subjects. Social skills subjects did not differ from either group on this measure. Cognitive-relaxation subjects also perceived their treatment as significantly more helpful than did social skills subjects. No group differences were found for physical and verbal antagonism in the analogue, though these measures were low in the initial assessment, or for trait anxiety, anger-related physiological reactivity, or daily anger intensities, though the latter approached significance (p?