Anger Is Like Cigarettes — A Socio-Ecological Model of Reinforcement Asymmetry and Emotional Dependency —

This study extends the Anger-as-Indulgence Model (AIM) (Hiraoka, 2026c) by theorizing the structural conditions under which indulgent anger use transforms into non-beneficial emotional dependency. While AIM conceptualized anger as a substitutable emotional resource providing reliable short-term regulatory rewards, the present study argues that under specific socio-ecological configurations—characterized by reinforcement asymmetry, scarcity of alternative regulatory pathways, and feedback suppression—anger may undergo a qualitative shift from optional indulgence to structurally stabilized dependency. Drawing on reinforcement theory (Skinner, 1953), addiction research (Koob & Le Moal, 2001; Baker et al., 2004), organizational silence scholarship (Morrison & Milliken, 2000), psychological safety research (Edmondson, 1999), and field theory (Bourdieu, 1977; 1990), this paper situates anger dependency within an interdisciplinary framework. The analysis demonstrates that dependency does not require dispositional pathology; rather, it emerges when short-term regulatory benefits are privately experienced while long-term relational and informational costs are diffusely externalized. The metaphor “Anger Is Like Cigarettes” is introduced as an analytical device to describe this structural transformation. The paper concludes that anger dependency is a contingent product of institutional design and that structural recalibration—rather than moral correction—is required to interrupt regulatory concentration.