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Neurotic Anger, Subcategory of Anger

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Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine

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Synonyms

Neurotic hostility

Definition

This term refers to a type of anger which mainly reflects the affective component of anger. Neurotic anger (or neurotic hostility) is contrasted with antagonistic anger (or antagonistic hostility), which refers mainly to the behavioral component of anger (Dembroski and Costa 1987). Neurotic anger includes feelings of anger and is associated with the personality dimension of neuroticism-emotional stability, with neuroticism being the tendency to attend to, experience, and report negative affect. In contrast, antagonistic anger refers mainly to the agreeable-antagonism dimension of personality and includes disagreeable behavior, argumentativeness, rudeness, being evasive, and lack of cooperation. This distinction is of great importance in behavior medicine because studies have shown that mainly antagonistic, but not neurotic, anger/hostility is the element of anger/hostility predictive of cardiovascular reactivity to stress and of coronary artery...

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References and Further Readings

  • Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1987). Neuroticism, somatic complaints, and disease: Is the bark worse than the bite? Journal of Personality, 55, 299–316.

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  • Dembroski, T. M., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1987). Coronary prone behavior: Components of the type A pattern and hostility. Journal of Personality, 55, 211–235.

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  • Felsten, G. (1996). Five-factor analysis of Buss-Durkee hostility inventory neurotic hostility and expressive hostility factors: Implications for health psychology. Journal of Personality Assessment, 67, 179–194.

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  • Siegman, A. W., Malkin, A. R., Boyle, S., Vaitkus, M., Barko, W., & Franco, E. (2002). Anger, and plasma lipid, lipoprotein, and glucose levels in healthy women: The mediating role of physical fitness. Journal of Behavior Medicine, 25, 1–16.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, Free University of Brussels (VUB), 103, Laarbeeklaan, 1090, Jette, Belgium

    Yori Gidron

Authors
  1. Yori Gidron
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Correspondence to Yori Gidron .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA

    Marc Gellman

  2. Campbell University School of Pharmacy, Buies Creek, North Carolina, USA

    J. Rick Turner

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Gidron, Y. (2016). Neurotic Anger, Subcategory of Anger. In: Gellman, M., Turner, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1462-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1462-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

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