News Release

Education and hostility levels linked to body 'wear and tear'

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

Men who are less educated and more hostile show more signs of physiological "wear and tear" than those who are more educated and less hostile, according to a new study. The results suggest a relationship between lower socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by education level, and psychological factors such as hostility, which may increase the risk of poor health.

"Our results suggest that repeated stresses, such as those associated with lower SES, may trigger psychological factors such as hostility. In turn, hostility may increase wear and tear on the body directly through physiological activity or strain, or indirectly through health behaviors such as smoking," said lead author Laura D. Kubzansky, PhD, of the Department of Health and Social Behavior in the Harvard School of Public Health.

"The body responds to short-term threats, stress, or negative emotion with increased blood pressure or changes in endocrine levels, for example. These physiological responses normally subside when the stress is gone," said Kubzansky. Over time, however, repeated activation of these systems will increase wear and tear on the body.

The study involved 818 Boston-area men ages 21 to 80 years who were participating in the Normative Aging Study, an ongoing study of community-dwelling men that began in 1961. The researchers used education level to gauge the participants' SES and measured the participants' hostility levels by asking questions about negative emotions, feelings toward others, tendency to respond angrily or aggressively in certain situations, general behavior type, and cynicism, for example. The researchers report their findings in the current issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Wear and tear, or "allostatic load," was assessed by measuring blood pressure, abdomen-hip ratio, cholesterol and glucose levels, and urinary norepinephrine and epinephrine excretion levels.

The researchers found that the men with lower levels of education consistently had higher levels of both hostility and allostatic load. Study participants with less than a high school education had far higher levels of wear and tear than those with at least a college education.

The researchers note that their findings are limited to a population of white men and cannot be generalized to women or non-white populations.

The research was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the MacArthur Foundation Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, and the Cooperative Studies Program/Eric of the US Department of Veterans Affairs and is a component of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center.

Annals of Behavioral Medicine is the official peer-reviewed publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. For information about the journal, contact Arthur Stone, PhD, 516-632-8833.

###

Posted by the Center for the Advancement of Health www.cfah.org. For information about the Center, call Petrina Chong, pchong@cfah.org (202) 387-2829.


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.