In one of their episodes of "Bullshit!", Penn and Teller question the effectiveness of anger management programs. In one study they presented during the episode, a psychologist divided students into two groups. Both groups were required to sit alone in a room and write a simple essay answer to a question. Their essay was taken out of the room and returned a short time later with a nasty review by a TA. One group was told to vent their anger at the TA by punching a pillow; the control group was instructed to sit in silence to contemplate their grade.

After a while, a simple test was given to each student. They were told to fill in the missing letters in incomplete words, like this:

a t t _ c _
c h o _ e
r _ p e
k i _ _

The control group, which didn't do any venting, tended to fill in the blanks using letters that created innocuous words, like "attach" or "kind"; the group that did vent, however, used more violet words, like "attack" and "kill". The implication, of course, is that venting makes a person demonstrably more angry than not venting.

The truth is that we live in a world filled with missing letters. Anger aside, all communication is imperfect, not only because of the use of imperfect mediums, but because of how we listen. There are gaps in what we hear, and we fill in those gaps using our mood, our world view, and our ideals. Our brains are not equipped to deal with blanks, so we've trained ourselves to fill them in.

This isn't a problem. The problem is that are brains are really good at making us forget that we're even doing it.