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Getting Angry May Increase Risk of Heart Disease & Stroke

Recent research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggests that repeated bouts of anger could have the potential to increase your risk of cardiovascular health.

The study entitled “Translational research of the acute effects of negative emotions on vascular endothelial health: finding from a randomized controlled study” was published in May of 2024 and led by Dr. Daichi Shimbo, a Cardiologist and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Shimbo and his team examined the acute effects of provoked anger, and secondarily, anxiety and sadness on endothelial cell health, which is an overall indicator of vascular health.

Heart Study Methodology and Results

The study included 280 healthy adult participants who were randomized to an 8‐minute anger recall task, a depressed mood recall task, an anxiety recall task, or an emotionally neutral condition.

Following the session, researchers used a combination of serological markers to assess endothelial cell health.

Additionally, they tested for reactive hyperemia, or how quickly blood vessels are able to expand and facilitate blood flow after an occlusion.

Researchers found that anger negatively affected endothelial cell health by impairing the blood vessels’ ability to dilate, restricting blood flow.

This impaired state persisted up to forty minutes after the recall exercise, before returning to baseline. These findings were not identified for the other emotional states.

“Our data suggest that maybe the mechanisms that explain anxiety and sadness in heart disease risk are different than those that explain anger. So it tells us: be careful about lumping different negative emotions in the same bucket,” said Shimbo.

Anger and Heart Attack Risk

This is not the first study to suggest that the emotion of anger could affect your health.

A study published in The European Heart Journal Acute Cardiovascular Care suggests that having an episode of intense anger was associated with an 8.5 times greater risk of having a heart attack during the following 2 hours.

The study looked at 313 people who were being treated in a hospital for a heart attack. The men and women were asked to fill out a questionnaire about the level of anger they experienced in the last 48 hours based on a number scale from 1-7.

Level 1 was being “calm” and level 7 was “enraged, out of control, throwing objects and hurting yourself or others”. For study purposes, the threshold of acute anger was defined by level 5 – “very angry, body tense, maybe fists clenched, ready to burst”.

An anger level greater than 5 was reported among seven of the people in the study in the two hours prior to their heart attack, and up to four hours prior for one person.

An anger level of 4 was reported among two people within the the two hours before heart attack symptoms, and among four hours before for three people.

According to the researchers, the results come to a 8.5-fold increase in relative risk of a heart attack in the two hours following severe anger. People who reported high levels of anxiety, also had a higher risk.

Another Perspective on Understanding Anger

When we think about potentially destructive emotions, we often think about anger. And for good reason.

Anger is probably the most common emotion that we have that leads to feelings of regret later. Dr. Matsumoto doesn’t believe anger is inherently a “bad” emotion; getting angry can result in some good in our lives and in society. Anger, and all other basic emotions, exist for a reason.

In our evolutionary history, being angry (and disgusted and afraid and sad, etc.) was functional for us. That is, anger, as all other basic emotions, helped us deal with problems in our lives and in our environments in order to survive.

In our evolutionary past, emotions like anger were important in order to deal with many life struggles. All our emotions allowed us to handle incredibly difficult events that required us to think with minimal conscious awareness.

Emotions have helped us deal with birth, death, finding food, fighting for mates and resources, and everything else required for living for eons.

Anger, and all other emotions, have helped us deal with all these problems of living. Put another way, if we didn’t have anger (and the other emotions), we wouldn’t be here in the first place.

The post Getting Angry May Increase Risk of Heart Disease & Stroke first appeared on Humintell.

The Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions

What are the Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions?

Dr. David Matsumoto, Director of Humintell, recently led a free webinar where he provided participants with an overview of major research findings concerning keys to effective intercultural communication, as well as practical tips to interact with others from different cultures.

Most of us live in a multi-cultural society where effective intercultural communication is crucial. This is as a result of technology and other advancements. The world is getting smaller every day!

The Difference Between Cross-Cultural Adaptation vs Adjustment

Dr. Matsumoto believes at the heart of all intercultural communication and interactions is a process of adaptation and adjustment. Many scholars do not delineate between these two concepts.

Adaptation refers to the process of altering one’s behavior to fit in with a changed environment or circumstances.

Adjustment refers to the subjective experiences that are associated with, result from, or are consequences of, adaptation, and that motivate further adaptation. Dr. Matsumoto explains adjustment in laymen’s terms as “how we feel about what we’re doing”.

Living in any society in any culture requires a constant process of adaptation and adjustment, as noted in the above graphic. This process also encapsulates the underlying process of growth.

Defining Successful Intercultural Communication

How does Dr. Matsumoto define successful intercultural communication?

He outlines 4 factors that play a part, as seen in the graphic below.

  1. Having successful relationships with people from other cultures.
  2. Feeling that interactions are warm, cordial, respectful, and cooperative.
  3. Accomplishing tasks in an effective and efficient manner.
  4. All of the above, and the ability to manage psychological stress effectively.

Research has shown there are a lot of different types of people in terms of how they adapt and adjust in different cultures.

There’s many people who adapt (change their behaviors) but don’t adjust well. Adjustment problems may manifest itself in depression or anxiety or substance abuse problems.

Then there’s people who feel things are perfectly fine but they’re not adapting well.

Adaptation and adjustment go hand in hand when discussing intercultural interactions and intercultural communications.

The Contact Hypothesis (Allport, 1954)

So what does the science say about intercultural adjustment and communication?

One very important concept is called the Contact Hypothesis which is the proposition that contact between groups is effective in reducing prejudice.

One study that tested the contact hypothesis was known as The Robbers Cave Experiment where two group of boys were invited to participate in a summer camp (which in reality was part of a study in intergroup relationships).

The boys were separated into two groups (Rattlers and Eagles) and when the groups were unaware of each other, group activities were directed at building unity and cohesion.

During the second week, the two groups were brought together in a competitive environment where the other group became an obstacle to resources.

It was during this competitive period that the groups became hostile toward one another, calling each other names and even engaging in physical fights.

After a period of conflict, the groups participated in a superordinate goal and hostile feelings between groups were reduced after researchers allowed the groups to work cooperatively.

The Robbers Cave Experiment showed that when two groups feel mutually interdependent, hostility between groups subsides.

Key Psychological Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Competence

There’s also a large body of research that have examined what key psychological ingredients (skills, traits, abilities) can help intercultural competence effectiveness.

The instruments that have been developed examine traits have been shown across the last 50 years to be indicative of effective cross-cultural communication.

These tests include the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), and Intercultural Adjustment Potential Scale (ICAPS).

A 2013 study entitled Assessing Cross-Cultural Competence: A Review of Available Tests by Matsumoto and Hwang reviewed the validity of all existing instruments.

They found that the most important predictor of successful cross-cultural adaptation was emotional robustness aka emotion regulation.

Learn More About The Basics of Emotional Intelligence by Clicking Here.

Negative emotional reactions from cultural differences are inevitable. Adapting to these differences well require people to regulate their emotions well so they can acquire new skills and behaviors.

Final Tips and Advice for Next Steps

Dr. Matsumoto concluded his webinar by offering some helpful tips.

1. Get exposure to different people and cultures

2. Engage in activities or training to improve your own emotion regulation skills

He ended the webinar by playing the video below about Tarra and Bella- The elephant and dog who became best friends.

The post The Key Ingredients to Effective Intercultural Interactions first appeared on Humintell.

Understanding Human Behavior with Dr. David Matsumoto

Humintell Director David Matsumoto recently appeared on the Social-Engineer Podcast: The Doctor Is In Series – where they discuss understandings and developments in the field of psychology.

In their latest episode, Social Engineer CEO Chris Hadnagy and Director of Education Dr. Abbie Marono interview Dr. Matsumoto on the topics of emotion and nonverbal communication.

The Origins of Human Emotion

They began the podcast by speaking about the origins of human emotion where he addressed claims that facial expressions of emotion are not innate or universal in nature.

Dr. Matsumoto points out that the thought that emotions are not innate and entirely constructed is actually a minority thought or concept within the field itself, although it gets a lot of traction.

Matsumoto’s Olympic Study

They discuss Dr. Matsumoto’s famous Olympic Judo Study entitled Spontaneous Facial Expressions of Emotion of Congenitally and Noncongenitally Blind Individuals.

This study was conducted at the 2004 Athens Olympic and Paralympic Games where photographs were taken during medal matches in the judo competition.

From these images, Dr. Matsumoto and his team were able to study the first reactions of these judo athletes when they won or lost a medal match.

The results of this study of 84 athletes from 34 countries, showed that winners were immediately smiling. Losers generally showed sadness or disgust or anger. Importantly, there were no cultural differences in these reactions.

Additional images were taken of Paralympic athletes, many of them who were congenitally blind from birth. Researchers compared the images of the sighted and non-sighted athletes and found an amazing amount of similarity between them.

This research (and many others like it) suggests that the capacity to have emotions and facial expressions of emotion is biologically innate.

Behavioral Indicators of Mal-Intent

The conversation then shifted to discussing behavioral indicators of malicious intent.

Dr. Matsumoto emphasizes that much of his research and work has focused on immediate threats and is relevant for those who work at security checkpoints or in harm’s way. He delved into some of the research he’s conducted and their results.

A Writer’s Obligation

They discuss the anonymity and human factors that affect behavior as well as Dr. Matsumoto’s 7th Edition of his book Culture and Psychology.

He emphasizes that he now wants to focus his energy and knowledge on helping others.

The post Understanding Human Behavior with Dr. David Matsumoto first appeared on Humintell.