Even those who pick fights at 35,000 feet?

“They may be really nice people, but in that situation they got really deindividuated,” said Dr. Seppala of Stanford, referring to a loss of self-awareness. When we see another person act badly, we conclude, often incorrectly, that he or she is a bad person. Psychologists call this “fundamental attribution error.” After all, when we ourselves act badly, we simply say, “I had a bad day,” or “I wasn’t myself.” We don’t define ourselves as bad.

In a heated exchange, it can help to view the other person as someone who is fundamentally good, yet going through something stressful. Some people are obviously better at doing that — and at regulating their emotions — than others. They’re resilient, able to distance themselves from a stressful situation while others in the same situation fall apart. Are these stoics just born that way? Scholars like Dr. Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley, are still trying to find out. But she said being good at regulating emotion seems to be something that’s learned either early in life from, say, your parents, or later in life through conscious reflection on yourself as well as analysis of situations in which you learn to think, “this will pass,” or “it’s not relevant in the grand scheme of things.”

When our emotions are high and we’re physiologically aroused, however, it’s difficult to reason with ourselves. Thankfully, there are other ways to control the mind. Take breathing, for instance. Dr. Seppala cited a study that showed that different emotions such as joy, anger, fear and sadness, each have distinct patterns of breathing (like faster and shallow when afraid, she said). What’s revolutionary, she added, is that the study also showed that by breathing in different ways, people were actually able to generate different emotions.

“It’s the only autonomic process that can be controlled,” said Dr. Seppala, who is also the lead author of a study published last month in The Journal of Traumatic Stress that found that a breathing-based meditation was able to decrease post-traumatic stress in American military veterans. “We can learn to have an impact on our nervous system,” she said.

The breathing-based meditation that was used by the researchers is known as Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, and it has also been shown to increase self-reported “optimism and well-being” in college students, and to decrease self-reported anxiety in people with general anxiety disorder. Don’t have time for meditation or yoga? Experts say to make time, because the better you are, the better your fellow travelers will be.

“Taking care of yourself,” Dr. Seppala said, “is the most unselfish thing you can do.”

There’s plenty the airlines could be doing, too (aside from configuring planes with seats that actually fit their ticket holders). For example: Improve the cabin atmosphere.

“They have to think of the crowd as a potential community,” said Dr. James of the University of Hawaii, and enact certain community-building principles. One simple tactic is what he refers to as live demography: a flight attendant standing in front of the cabin asking questions like “How many of you are going home?” or “Raise your hand if you’ve never been on an airplane before.” It may sound like a kindergarten exercise, but it encourages passengers to relax, be friendly and communicate with one another. “It breaks the anonymity and the hostility,” Dr. James said.