Relationships Among Anger Experience, Anger Expression, Hostility, Hardiness, Social Support and Health Risk.

Abstract

This study examined the relationships of selected psychosocial variables--anger experience and anger expression, hostility, social support and hardiness--to each other and to health risk factors of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, serum cholesterol and triglycerides, and health promoting behaviors in 134 healthy adults. Anger-In and Anger-Out emerged as separate constructs rather than opposite ends of a unidimensional continuum. Subjects high in both Anger-In and Anger-Out had significantly higher systolic blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and hostility scores, and significantly lower scores on hardiness and the affection and affirmation components of social support. Multivariate relationships were analyzed using stepwise multiple regression procedures. Hostility was positively associated with anger experience and the high Anger-In/Anger-Out interaction. Hardiness was negatively predicted by hostility and Anger-In. For women, both affectional and affirmation social support were negatively associated with Anger-In, while affirmation for men was negatively associated with Anger-Out. Controlling for age and weight, interaction of high Anger-In with high Anger-Out contributed positively to prediction of systolic blood pressure and triglycerides for women and cholesterol for men. For men, interaction of high anger experience and high Anger-Out was negatively associated with diastolic blood pressure; the aid component of social support contributed to prediction of cholesterol and the affirmation component contributed to prediction of triglycerides, both in a negative manner. Healthy behaviors were negatively associated with hostility and high Anger-In/high Anger-Out for women, and positively associated with the affirmation component of social support for men. Healthy behaviors used as an independent variable contributed to prediction of cholesterol in women, but did not enter any other regression equations. Relationships between health risk and both anger expression (for both sexes), hostility (for women), and social support (for men) were supported. Hardiness did not enter into prediction of health risk indices after accounting for hostility. This may reflect the fact that no measures of life stress or illness episodes were included.