Citation

Bourassa KJ, Sbarra DA, Ruiz JM, Karciroti N, Harburg E. Psychosom. Med. 2019; 81(1): 26-33.

Affiliation

From the Department of Psychology (Bourassa, Sbarra, Ruiz), University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona; and School of Public Health (Kaciroti, Harburg), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychosomatic Society, Publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/PSY.0000000000000653

PMID

30571660

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Research in psychosomatic medicine includes a long history of studying how responses to anger-provoking situations are associated with health. In the context of a marriage, spouses may differ in their anger-coping response style. Where one person may express anger in response to unfair, aggressive interpersonal interactions, his/her partner may instead suppress anger. Discordant response styles within couples may lead to increased relational conflict, which, in turn, may undermine long-term health. The current study sought to examine the association between spouses' anger-coping response styles and mortality status 32 years later.

METHODS: The present study used data from a subsample of married couples (N = 192) drawn from the Life Change Event Study to create an actor-partner interdependence model.

RESULTS: Neither husbands' nor wives' response styles predicted their own or their partners' mortality. Wives' anger-coping response style, however, significantly moderated the association of husbands' response style on mortality risk 32 years later, β = -0.18, -0.35 to -0.01, p =.039. Similarly, husbands' response style significantly moderated the association of wives' response style and their later mortality, β = -0.24, -0.38 to -0.10, p <.001. These effects were such that the greater the mismatch between spouses' anger-coping response style, the greater the risk of early death.

CONCLUSIONS: For a three-decade follow-up, husbands and wives were at greater risk of early death when their anger-coping response styles differed. Degree of mismatch between spouses' response styles may be an important long-term predictor of spouses' early mortality risk.

Language: en