Anger Is Social: Motivational Gratifications, Reflective Processing, and Reuse Intention in a Mobile Anger Management Application

초록

This study examines how motivational gratifications from mobile app use — information seeking, entertainment, and social utility — relate to emotional outcomes and reuse intention in the context of a humanities-based anger management application. A total of 337 participants used the app over three weeks and completed pre- and post-use surveys. Structural equation modeling with latent variables revealed four key findings. First, none of the three gratifications significantly reduced state anger (SA1), suggesting that motivational engagement does not directly suppress acute anger arousal; these results should be interpreted as reflecting associations among variables rather than causal effects, given the single-group design. Second, information seeking and social utility—but not entertainment—significantly predicted subjective anger reflection (SA2), indicating that relational and informational motivations uniquely facilitate reflective anger processing. Third, all three gratifications directly and positively predicted reuse intention. Fourth, SA2 partially mediated the effects of information seeking and social utility on reuse intention, whereas SA1 did not mediate any path. In sum, the findings suggest that the primary emotional contribution of this app lies not in acute anger suppression but in promoting reflection-centered, perceptual change in how users interpret their anger experiences. Anger, as a fundamentally social emotion, is most productively processed through relational and informational motivational frames. The study contributes an integrated motivational–emotional model to mobile health and media psychology research, and highlights the theoretical potential of classical narrative content for digital emotional regulation.

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