August 27th, 2010
Research: Antisocial people have higher stroke risk
Disagreeableness or antagonism as a personality trait certainly seems to part of most bullies’ personalities. New research (published August 16, 2010 in Hypertension) links the trait with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) for both genders, but more pronounced in women. Antagonistic people have a higher risk of stroke. The finding strengthens the case that evidence exists that psychosocial factors impact health as much as physical factors do.
Researchers from the National Institute on Aging (lead researcher Angelina Sutin, PhD) studied 5,614 residents of Sardinia, Italy. The measure of personalty traits was a modified version of the NEO, a popular five-factor personality assessment questionnaire. One dimension, Agreeableness, tapped a person’s courteousness toward others, desire to compete rather than cooperate, cold and calculating nature, inconsiderateness, willingness to manipulate others and to tell them that they are not liked. Disagreeableness is defined as agreement with the negative actions, and researchers called it an antagonistic personality. Antagonists are primarily antisocial.
There is previous work linking personality (Type A pattern and hostility) to CVD when clinical symptoms are already present (e.g., hypertension, heart attack, stroke).
This study’s major contribution was to use ultrasound technology (non-invasive ultrasonography) to measure arterial wall thickening, a sign of aging, that can predict future CVD. It is called intima-mediat thickness, IMT. IMT is what is called a surrogate marker for, predictor of, stroke and acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). In the study, participants’ IMTs of the carotid artery (which supplies most of the blood to the brain) were measured.
Researchers measured participants’ IMT twice with three intervening years (a longitudinal study, the best way to measure individual changes) as well as measuring blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and diabetes.
The principal result was that the people considered most antagonistic (in the bottom 10% NEO Agreeableness scores) had a 40% increased risk for elevated IMT (in the top 25%), carotid artery wall thickening with its associated risk of stroke.
Antagonistic men had more IMT (averaging 0.04 mm) than non-antagonistic men. The IMT difference for women between antagonistic people and non-antagonistic people was greater than the difference for men (averaging 0.06 mm). This suggests that the role of personality was greater for women.
Because those with thickening had not yet had strokes or other clinical symptoms of CVD, the authors suggest that interventions to minimize the personality problem might be undertaken to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Redford Williams (see the above video) told a MedPage editor that the degree of cardiovascular event risk suggested by the study findings as associated with antagonistic personality traits was comparable to that of high LDL cholesterol, hypertension, or smoking.
“We really need, in this country and around the world, to begin to focus on ameliorating the effect of psychosocial risk factors just as we are on the physical risk factors,” said Williams.
RELEVANCE to the workplace bullying movement.
Obviously, the study suggests that the hotheaded, emotionally volatile bullies face a health risk of their own. But it could be that bullied targets who are exposed to unending stress from their bully’s assaults (a psychosocial risk factor) can become cynical and skeptical because their trust in the organization is eroded over time.
When individuals no longer feel safe and necessarily retreat from open social interactions which make them feel more vulnerable, they might become temporarily antisocial. Targets are typically high self-disclosers, open and trusting. When that personality style leads to psychological injuries, they may adopt more self-protective, antisocial approaches. They may start to act antagonistically. They certainly stop cooperating with employers who have enabled the harm to happen and failed to stop it. This study tell us that if they become more antagonistic, they risk more health problems.
Finally, it is important to educate courts and public officials to the solid empirical evidence that negative psychosocial factors adversely impact a person’s health as much as smoking, cholesterol, and glucose and insulin levels.
###
Additional reading:
Unpleasant People May Be More Prone to Stroke By John Gever, MedPage Today, August 16, 2010
The original source, very technical, article: Sutin A, et al. “Trait antagonism and the progression of arterial thickening. Women with antagonistic traits have similar carotid arterial thickness as men” Hypertension 2010; DOI:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.110.155317.
Tags: agreeableness, antagonistic personality, arterial wall thickening, CVD, disagreeableness, heart attack, IMT, NEO, personality, stroke
This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 10:42 am and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Loading ...
Interesting study, but the bullies I’ve seen are healthy as a horse while their targets are suffering physically. They say laughter is the best medicine and perhaps that partially explains their good health. Bullies laugh often when mocking their targets.
Ahhh,but from a holistic perspective, in the spiritual realm a bully is already breathing toxic fumes that will be the death of them.
I was very encouraged to find this site. I wanted to thank you for this special read on this research. I definitely savored every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.