Getting shouted at makes you work harder, but not necessarily better, according to a new study published by the Journal of Applied Psychology (via Paul Kedrosky).
In the study, 72 Israeli students listened to two recordings, one of a customer raging against a cellphone company agent and another where the complaint was expressed neutrally. The students who listened the angry call outperformed the others on analytical questions, but didn't do as well on the creative puzzles.
This supports the theory that people's minds go into a black-and-white mode when they're confronted with anger. They work hard to unravel straightforward, analytical problems, but have trouble with creative solutions.
On the other hand, anger communicated through sarcasm helped some students solve almost twice as many creative problems, as sarcasm takes more of a cognitive effort to be processed.