DEFENSIVE HOSTILITY, GENDER AND CARDIOVASCULAR LEVELS AND RESPONSES TO STRESS

Prior studies have demonstrated inconsistent relationships between the trait of hostility and cardiovascular responses to stress. To examine the hypothesis that only a subset of hostile subjects demonstrates gr eater cardiovascular responses to stress, we assessed relationships am ong hostility, defensiveness, and cardiovascular responses to stress i n 33 healthy men and 34 healthy women. Stressors used were math and sp eech tasks. Median splits on Cook-Medley Hostility Inventory (He) and defensiveness [Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale (MC)] classifi ed subjects into four groups: (a) Defensive Hostile (DH-high Ho and MG ), (b) Low Hostile (LH-low Ho and MG), (c) High Hostile (HH-high Ho, l ow MG), and (d) Defensive (Def-low Ho, high MG). Results indicate that Defensive Hostility is differentially related to cardiovascular level s in men and women. DH men exhibited greater systolic blood pressure ( SEP) levels than LH, Def; and HH men. Analyses of diastolic blood pres sures (DBPs) suggested a trend that LH and DH men demonstrated greater DBP levels than Def and HH men. In contrast, DH women were indistingu ishable from HH and Def women with respect to blood pressure, and LH w omen demonstrated the lowest SEP and DBP levels. There were no persona lity differences in cardiovascular change scores to stress. Gender dif ferences for affect were observed which may mediate the cardiovascular responses. These data suggest that the personality trait of Defensive Hostility may provide significant associations with blood pressure le vels and coronary disease in studies that do not find associations usi ng hostility alone.