Background: Higher trait anger has inconsistently been associated with hypertension and hypertension development, but social context in terms of recognition of other persons' anger has been neglected in this context.
Purpose: Here, we investigated anger recognition of facial affect and trait anger in essential hypertensive and normotensive men in addition to prospective associations with blood pressure (BP) increases.
Methods: Baseline assessment comprised a total of 145 participants including 57 essential hypertensive and 65 normotensive men who were otherwise healthy and medication-free. Seventy-two eligible participants additionally completed follow-up assessment 3.1 (±0.08 SEM) years later to analyze BP changes over time. We assessed emotion recognition of facial affect with a paradigm displaying mixed facial affect of two morphed basic emotions including anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Trait anger was assessed with the Spielberger trait anger scale.
Results: Cross-sectionally, we found that with increasing BP, hypertensive men overrated anger displayed in facial expressions of mixed emotions as compared to normotensive men (ps ≤ .019) while there were no differences in trait anger (p = .16). Prospectively, the interaction between mean anger recognition and trait anger independently predicted BP increases from baseline to follow-up (ps ≤ .043), in that overrating displayed anger predicted future BP increases only if trait anger was high.
Conclusions: Our findings indicate an anger recognition bias in men with essential hypertension and that overrating displayed anger in combination with higher trait anger seems to predict future BP increases. This might be of clinical relevance for the development and progression of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Keywords: Anger recognition (bias); Blood pressure; Hypertension; Mixed emotions; Trait anger.
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