Hostility and Conflict as Antecedents of Arousal and Disease

Abstract

A differential definition of “anger”, “hostility”, and “aggression” has escaped many a theorist or researcher — in part, probably, for good reason. The processes are often (but not always) interrelated and can be difficult to tease apart. One can, of course, argue that hostility would sensitize persons to certain kinds of information or would be likely to distort the meaning of incoming information. Anger would then be the outcome of a resulting perception, and aggression would be the obvious sequel to anger. However, even if these processes would function in this or some other simple fashion, they need hardly be sequential in a single direction. For that matter, hostility can result in anger, but anger, in turn, may produce or cue (reinforce, maintain, etc.) hostility. Anger may result in aggression, yet aggression, particularly when faced with counter-aggression from the target, may generate additional hostility and anger, and so forth. However, despite the difficulty of disentangling hostility, anger, and aggression, and despite the absence of a fixed sequence, we should try to achieve better and separate definitions of these concepts. Our understanding of the cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes that are involved can only be advanced if we communicate clearly which component we are considering — even when the resulting categorization may seem (or be) somewhat artificial. In this paper, the three concepts are considered and defined differentially — in part, because a specific focus on “hostility” (where possible) will be essential for present purposes.

2 The finding that hostility scores are quite stable across time would add additional credence to a view of hostility as a stylistic rather than a content variable (cf., for example, Shekelle et al. 1983).