Paying the price for anger: Do women bear greater costs?

Abstract

P rior research shows that the social costs of expressing anger may be greater for women than for men. However, less is known about whether anger expression is also associated with greater intrapersonal costs for women relative to men. We tested the hypothesis that outward anger expression would be related to greater depressive symptoms over time for women, but not men. A nationally representative sample of 942 community-dwelling adults reported on their frequency of anger expression and completed diagnostic interviews to assess depressive symptoms at baseline and 9-year follow-up. Moderation analyses using bootstrapping revealed a significant main effect of anger-out on depression. As predicted, gender moderated the effects of anger-out on depression, such that greater anger-out at baseline predicted greater depression in women 9 years later, even after controlling for baseline depression. Findings add to the literature by revealing the intrapersonal costs women may incur from anger expression.

The Structure of Stress Experiences in Patients in the Lumbar Spine Pain Syndrome during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Poland

“…The above-mentioned conditions are related to the emotional and cognitive processing of stimuli coming from the environment, which, depending on the sex, trigger different physiological processes. Therefore, it can be assumed that these reactions, activated by stress mobilization and constituting one of the basic factors contributing to the genesis of mental disorders, in a manner characteristic for women and men, shape the intensity and structure of stressful experiences during the epidemic [21, [23][24][25]48,49].…”