Dimensions of hostility in men, women, and boys: relationships to personality and cardiovascular responses to stress.

Abstract

Ratings of Potential for Hostility and Hostile Style based on responses during the Type A Structured Interview (SI) are related to incidence of coronary heart disease morbidity and mortality. As there are very limited data on what precisely the SI ratings of hostility mean, the present study evaluated, in a sample of middle-aged men and women, and adolescent boys, a) the distributions of SI ratings of hostility according to gender and age group; b) their relationships to other hostility and personality scores; and c) their relationships to heightened cardiovascular responses to psychological stressors, which are thought to be a major mechanism linking behavior and coronary heart disease. Results showed that men are higher than women and boys in Potential for Hostility and Hostile Style ratings, which are, by and large, unrelated to standardized questionnaire measures of hostility and anger expression. Men (but not women or boys) who exhibited elevated systolic blood pressure during standardized laboratory stressors tended to be rated as high on Hostile Style. We conclude that SI Hostile Style ratings are measuring a unique aspect of personality, one with apparent importance for coronary heart disease and perhaps for men's cardiovascular responses during stress.