Anger, a complex emotion – and the focus of a great deal of research by mental health professionals – continues under study as scientists in health care fields observe the relationship between emotional and physical problems, especially the correlation between anger and physical problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and gastrointestinal problems.
In the 1970s, cardiologists Dr. Meyer Friedman and Dr. Ray Rosenman published research on the “Type A” personality. They found these individuals to be extremely competitive, impatient, driven and easily moved to hostility and anger. Conclusions were that Type A behavior was another risk factor for cardiac problems along with smoking, high cholesterol levels, genetic factors, etc.
New studies on the Type A personality, however, show that the original research oversimplified the problem. Most recent research indicates that being competitive by itself is not necessarily a risk factor. Nor is the driven individual who is always in a hurry necessarily prone to have heart problems. Hostility and anger are the danger components. For instance, being in a hurry does not appear to be harmful unless one’s hostility is aggravated. This new research found that the underlying problem in a hostile individual is cynical mistrust of other people.
When a person develops a belief that someone is going to use or mistreat him or her, that belief becomes a feeling that takes the form of anger. The anger causes the individual to respond with hostile, sometimes aggressive behaviors.
Interesting to note is that the person who ahs the cynical mistrust of people frequently directs it toward an unknown person.
As an example, you may be waiting in a line of traffic at a stop light. If the person at the front of the lines doesn’t move as rapidly as you think he should, you become angry, saying the driver is undoubtedly a “Sunday” driver who doesn’t know how to driver properly. You have ascribed motives to an unknown person with unknown facts. In a few brief seconds you have become tense and angry. You may swear, grip the wheel until your knuckles are white. Your upset feelings are on display. Chemical changes are taking place in your body, including the production of adrenaline and other hormones that correlate with an increase in respiration, heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological factors that cause stress.
Let’s take another example. Running late for your return home, you remember you need several items for dinner. At the grocery store, you enter the shortest express checkout line. Breathing a sign of relief, you count only one person ahead of you. But this individual dawdles while the checker moves all the items from the conveyer, registers each item and rings up the total amount. Your mood changes as the person questions an item’s price and the checker calls for a supervisor. Your blood pressure is already rising as the person in front of you searches through her purse for a pen and slowly begins to fill out the check.
Now you are furious because you feel this person should have planned ahead, had the check filled in except for the amount and decreased your waiting time. Your feelings become more intense as you blame this person who, you have already decided, is inconsiderate for making you later than you’re already are. If any of this seems to apply to you, then you may be interested in next week’s column dealing with help for the “hostile heart.”
Copyright c 1991 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.
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