Do Hypertensive Men Spy With an Angry Little Eye? Anger Recognition in Men With Essential Hypertension - Cross-sectional and Prospective Findings.

Auer, Alisa; von Känel, Roland; Lang, Ilona; Thomas, Livia; Zuccarella-Hackl, Claudia; Degroote, Cathy; Gideon, Angelina; Wiest, Roland; Wirtz, Petra H (2022). Do Hypertensive Men Spy With an Angry Little Eye? Anger Recognition in Men With Essential Hypertension - Cross-sectional and Prospective Findings. Annals of behavioral medicine, 56(9), pp. 875-889. Oxford University Press 10.1093/abm/kaab108

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BACKGROUND

Higher trait anger has inconsistently been associated with hypertension and hypertension development, but social context in terms of recognition of other persons' anger has been neglected in this context.

PURPOSE

Here, we investigated anger recognition of facial affect and trait anger in essential hypertensive and normotensive men in addition to prospective associations with blood pressure (BP) increases.

METHODS

Baseline assessment comprised a total of 145 participants including 57 essential hypertensive and 65 normotensive men who were otherwise healthy and medication-free. Seventy-two eligible participants additionally completed follow-up assessment 3.1 (±0.08 SEM) years later to analyze BP changes over time. We assessed emotion recognition of facial affect with a paradigm displaying mixed facial affect of two morphed basic emotions including anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Trait anger was assessed with the Spielberger trait anger scale.

RESULTS

Cross-sectionally, we found that with increasing BP, hypertensive men overrated anger displayed in facial expressions of mixed emotions as compared to normotensive men (ps ≤ .019) while there were no differences in trait anger (p = .16). Prospectively, the interaction between mean anger recognition and trait anger independently predicted BP increases from baseline to follow-up (ps ≤ .043), in that overrating displayed anger predicted future BP increases only if trait anger was high.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate an anger recognition bias in men with essential hypertension and that overrating displayed anger in combination with higher trait anger seems to predict future BP increases. This might be of clinical relevance for the development and progression of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Radiology, Neuroradiology and Nuclear Medicine (DRNN) > Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy

UniBE Contributor:

Hackl, Claudia, Wiest, Roland Gerhard Rudi

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

1532-4796

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

25 Mar 2022 09:49

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:36

Publisher DOI:

10.1093/abm/kaab108

PubMed ID:

35323902

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Anger recognition (bias) Blood pressure Hypertension Mixed emotions Trait anger

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/168033

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/168033

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