Aggressive verbal behaviour as a function of experimentally induced anger in persons with psoriasis

The importance of psychosocial factors on the etiology and fluctuating dise ase activity of psoriasis has been discussed in recent years. The present e xperiment investigated whether psoriatics in an anger-inducing situation sh ow less aggressive verbal behaviour than average person. Twenty-six psoriat ics and 26 matched healthy controls were randomly assigned to either an ang er-inducing or a non-anger-inducing social situation. The experimental cond itions were arranged so that the persons were confronted with either negati ve, derogatory, or positive, favorable feedback on eight characteristics (i ntelligence, appearance, maturity, tolerance, honesty, friendliness, humor, and helpfulness). Standardized feedback was given by a confederate of the experimenter. Immediately after the feedback was received by the subjects t he photo hand test (PHT) was applied. The PHT is an item-analyzed, validate d projective test for aggression. Two independent raters categorized the su bjects' responses into six mutually exclusive categories, including a categ ory for responses with aggressive content. 2 x 2 analysis of variance (psor iatics vs controls; anger-induced vs non-anger induced) were calculated for the aggressive responses and the acting-out score (AOS). The results showe d a significant interaction, suggesting that psoriatics did indeed exhibit fewer verbal aggression responses under anger-inducing circumstances than t he controls.