Hostility

BACKGROUND: Hostility is associated with a significantly increased risk of age-related disease and mortality, yet the pathophysiological mechanisms involved remain unclear. Here we investigated the hypothesis that hostility might impact health by promoting cellular aging. METHODS: We tested the relationship between cynical hostility and two known markers of cellular aging, leukocyte telomere length (TL) and leukocyte telomerase activity (TA), in 434 men and women from the Whitehall II cohort.

OBJECTIVES: Although psychological factors have been associated with chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease (CHD), the underlying pathways for these associations have yet to be elucidated. DNA methylation has been posited as a mechanism linking psychological factors to CHD risk. In a cohort of community-dwelling elderly men, we explored the associations between positive and negative psychological factors with DNA methylation in promoter regions of multiple genes involved in immune/inflammatory processes related to atherosclerosis. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study.

Sex sterotypes, clinical observations, and psychoanalytic theory of sex differences are presented. Stereotypes show differences in areas of inhibition and clinical observations, differences related to the phallic and genital phases in psychosexual development. Divergent analytical views on the sexual development of boys and girls are discussed.

The roles of the archaic loving and hating introjects are traced in the early scientific romances and the life work of H.G. Wells. The preambivalent polarization of the early loving introjects of an archaic ego ideal (giving rise to utopian fantasies and, later, to promulgations of a new world state) and the early hostile introjects of an archaic superego (giving rise to fears of death and, later, to fears of cosmic dissolution) is represented in eschatological preoccupations with death, the Last Judgment, heaven and hell.

A group of transsexual and homosexual men was examined using the Leary Test as a psycho-sociogram, and findings were compared to those from a group of heterosexual men. It was found that the fathers of homosexuals and transsexuals were more hostile and less dominant than the fathers of the control group and hence less desirable identification models. The average mothers of transsexuals were close to the ideal person in our culture, e.g., dominant, strong and kindly, and thus an imposing identification model.

Cynical Mistrust was examined among 64 medical and surgical patients, 23 of whom were selected for a history of CHD and 41 for an absence of such a history. Cynical Mistrust was found to differentiate subjects with a positive history from those without such a history. As hypothesized, persons scoring high in Cynical Mistrust also scored high in Self-Worth by Social Comparison, Playing Hardball with Others and Self-Criticism.

The "personal characteristics" and "extreme event" hypotheses have been proposed as alternative explanations for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among combat veterans. The person-event interaction model attempts to integrate both perspectives by hypothesizing that premilitary individual vulnerability characteristics play a greater role in influencing risk of PTSD or PTSD symptom severity at lower than at higher levels of exposure to traumatic combat stressors.

This study evaluated the effects of two versions of a six-week group forgiveness intervention for college women who had been wronged in a romantic relationship. Participants (N = 58) were randomly assigned to a secular, religiously integrated, or no-intervention comparison condition. Participants completed a variety of forgiveness and mental health measures at one-week pretest, one-week posttest, and six-week follow-up.