Abstract
Hostility has been studied mainly in relation to coronary heart disease (CHD). However, given the pathways linking hostility to CHD, it might be expected that hostility also relates to non-CHD. Therefore, the relation between the expression and the experience of hostility and various health outcomes was examined in a cross-sectional design. The data were collected among male patients with a myocardial infarction in the age range of 30–70 years (N = 279) and a population sample of men in the same age group (N = 2663). Based on a checklist of the most frequent disorders, the subjects from the latter group were divided into subsamples according to their disease status. Three components of hostility, i.e., resentment, suspicion, and aggression, were measured by the Buss Durkee Hostility Inventory (Buss & Durkee, 1957). The overall finding was that all components of hostility were related to non-CHD disease but not to CHD.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Barefoot, J. C. (1992). Developments in the measurement of hostility. In Friedman, H. S. (eds.), Hostility, Coping, and Health, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Barefoot, J. C., Dahlstrom, W. G., and Williams, R. B. (1983). Hostility, CHD incidence, and total mortality: A 25-year follow-up study of 255 physicians. Psychosom. Med. 45: 59–63.
Barefoot, J. C., Williams, R. B., Dahlstrom, W. G., and Dodge, K. A. (1987). Predicting mortality from scores on the Cook-Medley Scale: A follow-up study of 118 lawyers. Psychosom. Med. 49: 210.
Barefoot, J. C., Larsen, S., Von der Lieth, L., and Schroll, M. (1995). Hostility, incidence of acute myocardial infarction, and mortality in a sample of older Danish men and women. Am. J. Epidemiol. 142: 477–484.
Bushman, B. J., Cooper, H. M., and Lemke, K. M. (1991). Meta-analysis of factor analyses: An illustration using the Buss-Durkee hostility inventory. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 17: 344–349.
Buss, A. H., and Durkee, A. (1957). An inventory for assessing different kinds of hostility. J. Consult. Psychol. 21: 343–349.
Centraal Bureau van de Statistiek (1989). Standaard Onderwijs Indeling [Standard Classification of Education], CBS, Voorburg.
Cohen, F. (1979). Personality, stress and the development of illness. In Stone, G. C., Cohen, F., Adler, N. E., et al. (eds.), Health Psychology: A Handbook. Theories, Applications and Challenges of a Psychological Approach to the Health Care System, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp. 777–111.
Contrada, R. J., Leventhal, H., and O'Leary, A. (1990). Personality and health. In Pervin, L. A. (ed.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, Guilford Press, New York, pp. 638–669.
Cook, W. W., and Medley, D. M. (1954). Proposed hostility and pharisaic-virtue scales for the MMPI. J. Appl. Psychol. 38: 414–418.
Costa, P. T., and McCrae, R. R. (1987). Neuroticism, somatic complaints, and disease: Is the bark worse than the bite? J. Personal. 55: 299–316.
Costa, P. T., Zonderman, A. B., McCrae, R. R., and Williams, R. B. (1986). Cynicism and paranoid alienation in the Cook and Medley HO scale. Psychosom. Med. 48: 283–285.
Costa, P. T., Stone, S. V., McCrae, R. R., Dembroski, T. M., and Williams, R. B. (1987). Hostility, agreeableness-antagonism, and coronary heart disease. Holist. Med. 2: 161–167.
Dembroski, T. M., and Costa, P. T. (1987). Coronary prone behavior: Components of the Type A pattern and hostility. J. Personal. 55: 211–235.
Dembroski, T. M., MacDougall, J. M., Costa, P. T., and Grandits, G. A. (1989). Components of hostility as predictors of sudden death and myocardial infarction in the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial. Psychosom. Med. 51: 514–522.
Eysenck, S. B. G., Eysenck, H. J., and Barrett, P. (1985). A revised version of the Psychoticism scale. Person. Individ. Diff. 6: 21–29.
Hearn, M. D., Murray, D. M., and Luepker, R. V. (1989). Hostility, coronary heart disease, and total mortality: A 33-year follow-up study of university students. J. Behav. Med. 12: 105–121.
Hecker, M. H., Chesney, M. A., Black, G. W., and Frautschi, N. (1988). Coronarypronebehaviors in the Western Collaborative Group Study. Psychosom. Med. 50: 153–164.
Illsley, R., and Svensson, P. G. (1990). Health inequities in Europe. Soc. Sci. Med. 30: 220–421.
Johnson-Saylor, M. T. (1991). Psychosocial predictors of healthy behaviours in women. J. Adv. Nurs. 16: 1164–1171.
Koskenvuo, M., Kaprio, J., Rose, R. J., Kesäniemi, A., Sarna, S., Heikkila, K., and Langinvainio, H. (1988). Hostility as a risk factor for mortality and ischaemic heart disease in men. Psychosom. Med. 50: 330–340.
Kreitler, S., Weissler, K., Kreitler, H., and Brunner, D. (1991). The relation of smoking to psychological and physiological risk factors for coronary heart disease. Person. Individ. Diff. 12: 487–495.
Marmot, M. G., Smith, G. D., Stansfeld, S., Patel, C., North, F., Head, J., White, I., Brunner, E., and Feeney, A. (19910). Health inequalities among British civil servants: The Whitehall II study. Lancet 337: 1387–1393.
Matthews, K. A. (1988). Coronary heart disease and Type A behaviors: Update on and alternative to the Booth Kewley and Friedman (1987) quantitative review. Psychol. Bull. 104: 373–380.
McCranie, E. W., Watkins, L. O., Brandsma, J. M., and Sisson, B. D. (1986). Hostility, coronary heart disease, and total mortality: lack of an association in a 25-year follow-up study of 478 physicians. J. Behav. Med. 9: 119–125.
Miller, T. Q., Smith, T. W., Turner, C. W., Guijarro, M. L., and Hallet, A. J. (1996). A meta-analytic review of research on hostility and physical health. Psychol. Bull. 119: 322–348.
Ragland, D. R., Brand, R. J., and Fox, B. H. (1992). Type A/B behavior and cancer mortality: The confounding/mediating effect of covariates. Psycho-oncology 1: 25–33.
Ranchor, A. V., Bouma, J., and Sanderman, R. (1996). Vulnerability and social class: Differential patterns over the social classes. Person. Individ. Diff. 20: 229–237.
Romanov, K., Hatakka, M., Keskinen, E., Laaksonen, H., Kaprio, J., Rose, R. J., and Koskenvuo, M. (1994). Self-reported hostility and suicidal acts, accidents, and accidental deaths: a prospective study of 21,443 adults aged 25 to 29. Psychosom. Med. 56: 328–336.
Sanderman, R., Eysenck, S. B. G., and Arrindell, W. A. (1991). Cross-cultural comparisons of personality: The Netherlands and England. Psychol. Rep. 69: 1091–1096.
Sanderman, R., Arrindell, W. A., Ranchor, A. V., Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1995). Het meten van persoonlijkheidskenmerken met de Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ): een handleiding (The Measurement of Personality Characteristics with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ): A Manual), Northern Centre for Healthcare Research, Groningen.
Schonwetter, D. J., and Janisse, M. P. (1991). Alcohol consumption, anger and hostility: A link to coronary heart disease. Person. Indiv. Diff. 12: 1049–1055.
Shekelle, R. B., Gale, M., Ostfeld, A. M., and Paul, O. (1983). Hostility, risk of coronary heart disease, and mortality. Psychosom. Med. 45: 109–114.
Siegman, A. W., Dembroski, T. M., and Ringel, N. (1987). Components of hostility and the severity of coronary artery disease. Psychosom. Med. 49: 127–135.
Suls, J., and Marco, C. A. (1990). Relationship between JAS-and FTAS-Type A behavior and non-CHD illness: A prospective study controlling for negative affectivity. Health Psychol. 479–492.
Suls, J., and Sanders, G. S. (1989). Why do some behavioral styles place people at coronary risk? In Siegman, A. W., and Dembroski, T. M. (eds.), In Search of Coronary-Prone Behavior: Beyond Type A, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 1–20.
Smith, T. W. (1992). Hostility and health: Current status of a psychosomatic hypothesis. Health Psychol. 11: 139–150.
Williams, R. B., Haney, T. L., Lee, K L., Kong, Y.-H., Blumenthal, J. A., and Whalen, R. E. (1980). Type A behavior, hostility, and coronary atherosclerosis. Psychosom. Med. 42: 539–549.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ranchor, A.V., Sanderman, R., Bauma, J. et al. An Exploration of the Relation Between Hostility and Disease. J Behav Med 20, 223–240 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025538926879
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025538926879