Hostility and Anger Measures in Coronary Heart Disease

Recent research addressing the link between psychological factors and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) has focused on the areas of hostility and anger and produced sometimes contradictory results. This study makes use of four questionnaire measures of hostility and anger, which were administered to matched groups with and without CHD. Quicker experiences of anger with greater verbal expression best predicted CHD. The difficulties in teasing out the relative contributions of emotional expression, experience and personality using available questionnaires are discussed.