Marital Hotheads — Cool It!

Would it surprise you to know that the way you fight with your spouse is an indicator of health problems down the road?

Spouses who flew off the handle more easily were at greater risk of developing chest pain and high blood pressure.

“Our findings reveal a new level of precision in how emotions are linked to health, and how our behaviors over time can predict the development of negative health outcomes,” said University of California, Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson, senior author of a new study.

Levenson, along with colleagues at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University, have wrapped up a review of 20 years of data on the inner workings of long-term marriages. Participants are part of a cohort of 156 middle-aged and older heterosexual couples in the San Francisco Bay Area whose relationships Levenson and fellow researchers have tracked since 1989.

Every five years, the couples were videotaped while they discussed events in their lives, including areas of disagreement and enjoyment. Behavioral coders rated the wide range of emotions and behaviors each had based on facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. In addition, the spouses completed questionnaires about specific health problems.

“Our findings suggest particular emotions expressed in a relationship predict vulnerability to particular health problems, and those emotions are anger and stonewalling,” Levenson said.

Specifically, they found that if you’re among those quick to anger during a marital spat, you need to keep an eye on your blood pressure. And if you’re the type that shuts down, walks away, or keeps a stiff upper lip — watch your back.

Spouses who flew off the handle more easily were at greater risk of developing chest pain, high blood pressure, and other cardiovascular problems over time.

“We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes — and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years,” said the study’s lead author.

Those who stonewalled by barely speaking and avoiding eye contact were more likely to develop backaches, stiff necks or joints, and general muscle tension.

“We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes — and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years for husbands based on the emotional behaviors that they showed during these 15 minutes,” said the study’s lead author, Claudia Haase, an assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University.

“For years, we’ve known that negative emotions are associated with negative health outcomes, but this study dug deeper to find that specific emotions are linked to specific health problems,” Levenson said. “This is one of the many ways our emotions provide a window for glimpsing important qualities of our future lives.”

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The study, published in the journal Emotion, was controlled for such factors as age, education, exercise, smoking, alcohol use, and caffeine consumption.

Overall, the link between emotions and health outcomes was most pronounced for husbands, but some of the key correlations were also found in wives. It did not take the researchers long to guess which spouses would develop ailments down the road, based on how they reacted to disagreements.

The researchers said they hope the findings spur hotheads to consider interventions like anger management — while people who withdraw during conflict might benefit from resisting the impulse to bottle up their emotions.