People perform better in competitions and are better equipped to face challenges if they exhibit key behaviours

Foul-mouthed stars like Gordon Ramsay and Sir Alex Ferguson might have reached the top thanks to their famously short tempers helping them achieve their goals, scientists found.

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Getting angry helps people face a challenge and improves their performance in competitions, US researchers found.

Dr Heather Lench, of Texas A&M University, said: “Anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success.

“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable and maladaptive.

“Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of emotions promotes well-being, and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations.”

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, looked at how people use anger to solve certain problems.

Researchers asked more than 1,000 university students to play a series of games while in different emotional states, including anger, amusement or sadness, as well as being neutral.

One game involved word puzzles, while another asked people to try and set a high score on a skiing video game.

Being angry improved people’s performance across all games when compared to being unemotional or sad.

People had better scores and shorter response times when angry in some cases, and some cheated more.

Dr Lench said: “People often believe that a state of happiness is ideal, and the majority of people consider the pursuit of happiness a major life goal.

“The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and well-being has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion.

“But a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes.”