Abstract

The present study was designed to resolve the inconsistent findings on the role of anger expression (anger-in vs. anger-out) on cardiovascular diseases in general and coronary heart disease (CHD) in particular. In order to do this, the present study explored the role of the standard of anger expression (intrapersonal factor> and marital satisfaction (interpersonal factor) beyond the mode of anger expression to CHD. The participants were 124 CHD patients and their spouses. They responded with the Korean adaptation of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Chon, Hahn, & Lee, in press), the standard of anger expression questionnaire, and the marital satisfaction scale (Lee, 1998). In a logistic regression analysis, including the mode of anger expression as predictor variable and the presence of CHD as a criterion variable, anger-out was shown to be the significant predictor on CHD. However, this pattern was changed in further analyses in consideration with either standard of anger expression or marital satisfaction. When analyzed with the standard of anger expression (high vs. low group based on median split), anger-out appeared to be a significant predictor on CHD; however, these effects revealed only when the mode of anger expression was mismatched with the standard of anger expression. In a similar fashion, the mode of anger expression doesn't matter in the higher group in marital satisfaction, while it was the case in the lower group in marital satisfaction. The present findings suggest the dire need to include important intrapersonal and/or interpersonal moderators or mediators in the relation between anger and CHD in future studies.