• Men with high blood pressure have a bias

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Mar 31 22:30:44 2022
    Men with high blood pressure have a biased recognition of other people's
    anger

    Date:
    March 31, 2022
    Source:
    University of Konstanz
    Summary:
    Men with high blood pressure have a biased recognition of other
    people's anger, as shown in a new study.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    Men with high blood pressure have a biased recognition of other people's
    anger, as shown in a new study.


    ========================================================================== Hypertension is a disease. However, in the majority of cases, there is no
    clear medical explanation, referred to as "essential hypertension." Could psychological factors play a role? In this context, Konstanz biological
    health psychologists Alisa Auer and Professor Petra Wirtz conducted a
    study in male participants over several years together with colleagues
    from Konstanz (Germany) and Switzerland. The researchers wanted to better understand the psychobiosocial mechanisms in hypertension, since previous
    work in this area has left many questions open.

    In an article published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine on 22nd
    March 2022, they show that compared to a healthy control group, men with essential hypertension more often recognized angry expressions when they
    looked into the faces of others. In addition, this anger recognition bias
    seems to contribute to blood pressure increases over time if someone
    tends to frequently and intensively experience anger. This tendency is
    called "trait anger." Recognition of mixed emotions In their study in
    145 hypertensive and normotensive men, researchers presented different
    pictures of people who were angry. However, the pictures did not just
    display anger alone, but combined anger with one of three other emotions:
    fear, happiness, and sadness. The background for this approach is that,
    in everyday life, people's faces rarely show just one emotion. Mixed
    emotions are more prevalent. Each of the computer-morphed pictures showed
    two emotions with varying affect intensities. Participants were asked
    which emotion they saw in the pictures.

    "Hypertensive men recognized anger more often than any other emotion,"
    Alisa Auer says. "So, they overrated anger displayed in other people's
    faces as compared to our healthy control group." Petra Wirtz adds:
    "Overrating anger displayed by other persons seems to affect whether high 'trait anger' contributes to blood pressure increases over time." Hence, interpersonal factors seem to play a role in essential hypertension. The expectation of associations between hypertension and social aspects
    was one of the reasons why the study was supported by the Cluster of
    Excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour."
    Improving treatment of essential hypertension Auer and Wirtz hope that
    their results will be examined and confirmed by other researchers. "Then,
    a next step would be to offer people with essential hypertension a more targeted support," says Alisa Auer, who is currently completing her
    doctorate in Psychology. Auer is thinking of "therapeutic treatments that address a person's perception of social environments in order to protect
    them from other people's anger." Such therapeutic interventions would
    be important, because blood pressure lowering medication only treats the consequences of hypertension, but does not address potential causes. In addition, hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In 2020, as in previous years, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) listed cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death
    in Germany. "338,001 deaths, or more than one third of all deaths (34%),
    can be attributed to cardiovascular disease," Destatis reports.

    Cardiovascular disease is especially deadly for older people: 93% of
    those who died of cardiovascular disease were 65 years or older.

    What about women? The researchers hope that future studies will include
    women.

    Since women may possibly differ in their emotion recognition from men
    and as fewer women suffer from hypertension, the study initially focused
    on men.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Konstanz. Note:
    Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Alisa Auer, Roland von Ka"nel, Ilona Lang, Livia Thomas, Claudia
    Zuccarella-Hackl, Cathy Degroote, Angelina Gideon, Roland Wiest,
    Petra H Wirtz. Do Hypertensive Men Spy With an Angry Little
    Eye? Anger Recognition in Men With Essential Hypertension -
    Cross-sectional and Prospective Findings. Annals of Behavioral
    Medicine, 2022; DOI: 10.1093/ abm/kaab108 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220331121236.htm

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