Five-factor analysis of Buss-Durkee hostility inventory neurotic hostility and expressive hostility factors: Implications for health psychology

Neurotic and expressive hostility were evaluated from the perspective of the five-factor model of personality. Sixty-five male and 105 female students (mean age = 25.0 years) at a public university completed the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory, the revised NEO Personality Inventory, and measures of stress and depression. Correlations were computed between the hostility measures and all personality domains and facets. Profiles of participants classified into neurotic and expressive hostility groups were also produced using T scores based on normative samples. The results suggest that neurotically hostile individuals view others as distrustful, the world as threatening, and themselves as unable to cope. They experience frequent negative affect, including unexpressed anger. Expressive hostility predicts direct and positive engagement of the environment and others, but also a readiness to express anger in response to conflict. The lack of association between neurotic hostility and objective health problems may be due, in part, to an absence of exaggerated behavioral and physiological responses to stressors, whereas the positive association between expressive hostility and heart disease may result partly from frequent and intense behavioral engagement and accompanying physiological arousal.