Hostility and Health

Carlos Iribarren

The link between emotions and health, commonly conceptualized as the “mind-body connection,” has been known since ancient times. Perhaps the first ever recorded heart attack is described in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 25), circa 1050 B.C. The victim, an important and very rich man called Nabal, was renowned for being “churlish and evil in his doings.” In 1882, Sir William Osler postulated that personality was a risk factor for coronary heart disease. In the late 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman described the Type A behavior pattern, characterized by competition, aggression, and sense of time urgency. The Western Collaborative Group Study team was among the first to report an association between Type A behavior pattern and coronary heart disease in the United States. However, the Type A behavior hypothesis was not confirmed by subsequent investigations, and evidence emerged indicating that particular ingredients of Type A behavior, namely, hostility and unexpressed anger, ...

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