When you feel angry, try saying, "I am angry now." It sounds too simple, but it may help. Scientists at UCLA showed people photos of angry and scared faces.

When people chose a word for the feeling, like "angry," a part of the brain that reacts to danger became less active. This part works like a fire alarm. Naming your feelings may turn down the alarm.

Telling yourself to calm down often does not work. A simpler way may be to put your feelings into words. In a 2007 study at UCLA, participants looked at photos of angry or scared faces while their brains were scanned. When they chose an emotion word such as "angry" for each face, the amygdala, which reacts quickly to danger, became less active.

At the same time, a part of the brain that helps control emotions became more active. In another study, people who were afraid of spiders described their fear while approaching a real spider. A week later, their bodies showed smaller stress responses than those of people who did not describe their fear. But they did not report feeling less afraid.

In a 2007 UCLA study, volunteers in an fMRI scanner looked at photos of angry or fearful faces. For each face, they either picked an emotion word, such as "angry," or a name that matched the person's gender.

Choosing the emotion word lowered activity in the amygdala, the brain's alarm system, and raised activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region linked to restraining emotion. People with more activity there showed weaker amygdala responses. This is affect labeling, or putting feelings into words.

A 2012 study took the idea out of the scanner. Spider-fearful volunteers approached a live spider, some describing their fear aloud. A week later, their skin conductance responses were smaller than those of people who had reappraised the situation, distracted themselves, or simply faced the spider. Their reported fear, however, was no different.

Many people expect labeling to make emotions stronger, even after experiencing the opposite, which is why researchers call it "implicit" emotion regulation. The evidence has gaps. A quieter amygdala does not automatically mean a person feels better, the experiments used brief laboratory stimuli, and labeling slightly dulls positive feelings too. Briefly naming a feeling also differs from rumination, which tends to worsen mood.