A Link between Hostility and Disease: Poor Health Habits?

Abstract

The Cook and Medley Hostility (Ho) Scale has been found to predict the occurrence of coronary heart disease, as well as total mortality, and to be related to the severity of coronary artery disease. It has been proposed that the relationship between Ho scores and health status is mediated by an unhealthy psychosocial risk profile. The present study investigated the health habits of 202 young adults; it used a shortened version of TestWell, a self-report inventory of health behaviors. Subjects were classified as high or low scorers on the Ho scale and their overall TestWell scores and those of four subscales were compared. High scorers reported poorer health habits overall (p = .003) and on three of the four subscales (Physical Fitness, p = .04; Self-Care, p = .04; Drugs and Driving, p = .0001). These results suggest that the poor health habits of individuals with high hostility scores may be an additional explanation of the link between hostility and subsequent disease to the psychosocial risk profile explanation recently proposed.

Rumination is independently associated with poor psychological health: Comparing emotion regulation strategies

“…The health outcomes studieddepression, poor sleep quality and anxiety -are those that are highly prevalent in the sample studied (Buboltz et al, 2001;Mackenzie et al, 2011;Wittchen et al, 1998). Moreover, both the health risk indicators and outcomes predict future poor health (Achat et al, 2000;Chida & Steptoe, 2009;Gopinath et al, 2007;Krueger & Friedman, 2009;Leiker & Hailey, 1988;McGee & Williams, 2000;Scheier & Carver, 1992;Trzesniewski et al, 2006;Woodward & Fergusson, 2001). Therefore, the observed pattern of results suggests the importance of rumination not only on current, but also future, health.…”

“…Moreover, early instances of depression (Gopinath, Katon, Russo, & Ludman, 2007), poor sleep quality (Krueger & Friedman, 2009) and anxiety (Woodward & Fergusson, 2001), predict both later relapse and worse long-term health. Likewise, the health risk indicators -hostility (Chida & Steptoe, 2009;Leiker & Hailey, 1988), optimism (Achat, Kawachi, Spiro, DeMolles, & Sparrow, 2000;Scheier & Carver, 1992), and self-esteem (McGee & Williams, 2000;Trzesniewski et al, 2006) -also have been shown to predict poor future health. Thus, a broad range of psychological health was assessed that are both highly present in the sample studied and predict poor future health.…”

Response of hostile individuals to stressful change in their working lives: test of a psychosocial vulnerability model

“…Poor health habits are assumed to be an other mechanism underlying the relationship between hostility and health (Koskenvuo et al 1988 ;Leiker & Hailey, 1988 ;Scherwitz et al 1992 ;Siegler et al 1992 ;Vahtera et al 1997). In the present study, all main findings were adjusted for sociodemographic background and behavioural risk factors.…”

“…Several theories have however been advanced (Williams et al 1985 ;Leiker & Hailey, 1988 ;Smith, 1994 ;Miller et al 1996). One involves a psychosocial vulnerability model.…”

Effects of Hostility and Lifestyle on Coronary Heart Disease among Middle-aged Urban Japanese.

“…In this study we measured multi-dimensional aspects of hostility with the aid of these questionnaires and examined the effects of hostility and lifestyle, which has been reported as being closely associated with hostility [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], on the etiology of coronary heart disease.…”