Like other difficult emotions, anger is a part of being human.

When expressed in a healthy manner — and safely acknowledged — it’s just one of the ways you know you’re a person in the world, reacting to things like getting cut off in rush hour or finding out someone filched your lunch.

Now, a study from the American Psychological Association is looking at the useful side of anger.

There’s plenty of media buzz to suggest that positive emotions are the ideal, but these experts suggest a mix of feelings that includes some “negative” ones may lead to the best outcomes.

To learn more about how anger can help people, scientists conducted a series of experiments involving more than 1,000 people, adding in analyses from more than 1,400 survey respondents.

Throughout the experiments, researchers elicited either an emotional response, like anger or desire, or a true neutral emotional state. Then, they gave participants a goal. In one experiment, for example, participants looked at photos designed to make them feel a certain way, before they were asked to solve word puzzles.

Across all experiments, anger improved participants’ ability to reach the goals when compared with a neutral feeling. That’s likely due to anger spurring them to increase their effort, resulting in a better outcome.

Of course, nothing comes without a price. Despite increased cores and quicker performance when participants felt anger, there was also an increase in cheating during one experiment.

But the study maintains that both positive and negative emotions have their place — you just need a balance.