After cooling down from an argument with a friend, I wondered how is anger different from hostility? I’ve worked with a lot of angry people – from psych patients to managers. In this article
So, what is the difference between hostility and anger? The main difference between hostility and anger is that anger is a transient emotional response usually triggered by perceived provocation or mistreatment. While Hostility is a habitual attitude that doesn’t require much provocation and is usually associated with cynicism and resentment.[ref]Karren, Keith J.
Everyone experiences anger, but not everyone is hostile. One is better for you physically then the other and you do have a say in each of them, even if you don’t feel that way all the time.
What Do Anger and Hostility Look Like? How to Tell the Difference
So, what exactly is anger? Everyone feels it at an early age. Infants and toddlers experience it when fighting over “who gets the ball.” I know my 5-year-old daughter and my 3-year-old son experience constant friction on what toys to play with.
Teenagers when they back on parent’s authority to establish their own identity. Or that time you got rear-ended just before work, making you extra late.
Anger is a temporary emotion. It is too “expensive” on the body’s physiological energy storehouses to be in it all the time. It’s a combination of physiological arousal with emotional arousal. In many ways angry behavior looks similar to hostile behavior. But angry has significant differences to hostility.
Anger can also be a secondary emotion. Perhaps you actually feel sad or afraid of something. To combat that fear and loss you use anger to fight at it.
But from what I described it seemed like anger and hostility have a lot in common. How are they different. Here’s a chart to show you:
| Anger | vs | Hostility |
| Temporary | vs | Chronic and long-lasting |
| feeling/emotion | vs | an attitude |
| Angry at the | vs | cynical, suspicious of others, paranoid (thinking everyone is out to get you), self-centeredness |
| Simple (fight or flight response) | vs | |
| Seeing an | vs | Hostility sees everyone or thing an “enemy” |
| Natural for | vs | Can lead to premature death. |
But from what I described it seemed like anger and hostility have a lot in common. How are they different. Here’s a chart to show you:
With this description we’re left with the helpful reality that hostility is bad for you and anger is a natural process of the human experience.
Theodore Dembroski gives a good description of the hostile person in action:
He’s the fellow who mutters and curses to himself if the line at the video
Diane K Ulmerstore is too long; the one who leans on his horn if you hesitate even a millisecond when the light turns green. He’s the hostile man, the one who gets angry over everyday frustrations and expresses those feelings in rude, antagonistic ways.[ref]Diane K. Ulmer, “Helping the Coronary Patient Reduce Hostility and Hurry Sickness: A Structured Behavioral Group Approach,” The Psychology of Health, Immunity, and Disease, vol. A, 587, in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina,December, 1994.[/ref]
When I thought about my friend, whom I got into argument with, I wondered if he was more like Dembroski’s “fellow.” Something you can ask about others is, “is this chronic ‘always there’ anger? Or is it only temporary?”
Or take Hermann’s advice next time someone close to you gets you angry.
Hermann Hesse
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us
Hostility seems nasty, where does it come from?
Where Does Hostility Come From?
Although there is some evidence of genetic predisposition (those who have had a family history of depression or controlling behaviors) researchers believe it primary takes place in how the child grows up learning.
In one study by the University of Kansas, [ref]J. C. Barefoot et al., “The Cook-Medley Hostility Scale: Item Content and Ability to Predict Survival,” Psychosomatic Medicine 5 (1989): 46-57[/ref] students who were more hostile had an oppositional orientation toward others that started when they were young.
They came from homes where both parents were either strict or coercive, used frequent physical punishment or hostile control and communicated often their dissatisfaction of the child.
Critical parents led to hostile children.
Those who were medium on the hostile scale described their parents as less warm and accepting – who interfered more in the desires of the child and were more punishing and less likely to encourage independent thinking[ref]Brent K. Houston and Christine R. Vavak, “Cynical Hostility: Developmental Factors, Psychosocial Correlates, and Health Behaviors,” Health Psychology 10, no. 1 (1991): 9-17[/ref]
For university students who scored high on the hostility chart were also those who had the lowest self-esteem and felt less accepted by others.
I think of bullies here.
What’s the cause of hostility? Most of the research has concluded it has to do with how one is raised. Especially in a study with twins who were separated at birth and placed with different families[ref]D. Carmelli, R. H. Rosenman, and G. E. Swan, “The Cook and Medley HO Scale: A Heritability Analysis in Adult Male Twins,” Psychosomatic Medicine 50, no. 2: 165-74[/ref]
Hostility in this case, arose out of a victim worldview. Makes sense. When a parent treats the child as a hostile or “enemy” and unaccepted person, they then the child grows up thinking everyone is
What Hurts More, Expressing Or Suppressing Anger?
Simply because anger is a natural response does not mean “just getting it out” is all that great for you.
According to Redford Williams, men who expressed their anger just to “get it out” at the age of 25, were more likely to have a higher death rate when followed up 25 years later. As Williams says here,
Quote “The simplistic advice, ‘when angry, let it out,’ is unlikely, therefore to be of much help. Far more important is to learn how to evaluate your anger and then to manage it.”[ref]Redford Williams and Virginia Williams, Anger Kills, “Conferences with Patients and Doctors,” (New York: Random House/Times Books, 1993), 8.[/ref]
Anger needs to be acknowledged and managed.
The other unhealthy use of anger is to stuff it down deep inside. As Dr. Daldrup noted, “once you start repressing one emotion you begin repressing them all.” Researchers called this the “keyboard effect” like the pedal that softens all the notes.
That pedal will soften all the notes on a piano, just as dulling one emotion will
Roger Daldrupdull them all. Sadly, people become used to that feeling of dullness, but the anger is still there, destroying your relationships,
sabotaging creativity, or interfering with your sex life.[ref] Roger Daldrup, “How a Good Dose of Anger Therapy Can Restore Peace of Mind,” Your Personal Best (April 1989): 8.[/ref]
This often looks like denial or repression.
For me, I came from a household where anger was mostly drama. Anger was used to shut out or shut up. As child, “anger” or drama as I now understand it, was lumped up with hostility.
And for me, the expression of anger was always a challenge to the parent.
Young Matt, interpreted anger as exile. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
While working with patients in healthcare were a number of other unhealthy ways I’ve seen people use anger:
- Miscommunicating
- Emotional distancing
- Escalating of the conflict
- Endlessly rehearsing grievances,
- Assuming a hostile disposition
- Acquiring angry habits
- Making a bad situation worse
- Losing respect for others.
Learning those unhealthy expressions of anger led to an unhealthy body became the
Unhealthy Expressions of Anger Leads to an Unhealthy Body
When anger isn’t delt with early it can lead to “cardiac sensations, headaches, nosebleed, mottling of the face, dizziness, tears, snarls, or a complete inability to vocalize.”[ref]H. Nabi et al., “Does Personality Predict Mortality? Results from the GAZEL French Prospective Cohort Study,” International Journal of Epidemiology 37, no. 2 (April 2008): 386-96.[/ref]
Stress
Repressed anger which is resentment, puts our bodies on high alert. It’s similar to your body under constant stress. Muscles tense up, blood pressure rises, and the digestive process slows down.
It’s like hitting the gas and the break at the same time.
Bad Skin
Even the skin is affected by anger. According to Psychologist Ted Grossbart, one of the two most “common human agonies that provide the underlying fuel for skin diseases is anger.”[ref]Steven Locke and Douglas Colligan, The Healer
Colds
Repressed anger can predispose you to the common cold[ref] L. D. Kubzansky, “Angry Breathing: A Prospective Study of Hostility and Lung Function in the Normative Aging Study,” Thorax, October 2006. [/ref]. This primarily happens by suppressing S-IgA, the antibody in saliva responsible
Headaches
Unhealthy expressions of anger have also been shown to be a major cause of headaches. Mismanaged anger, anger that is either suppressed or misdirected, has also been found to be a major factor in bulimia and anorexia.[ref]Tavris,Carol, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. 170-91[/ref]
If Both Are Bad for You, What Should You Do?
Balancing between stuffing and exploding is the major challenge with this emotion. From what I’ve read on this, the best thing is to communicate early where you are at emotionally.
My wife is italian, french, mexican, and hawaiian. She’s taught me a lot about expressing my anger early.
I’m mostly
One of the biggest breakthroughs in our marriage was when I got honest
Anger is usually a sign that something is wrong. Perhaps that some boundary has been crossed.
Anger is an integrity-producing response to the invasion of your personal boundaries.
Gabrielle Roth
Secondly, distinguishing it from drama helps us find a place for anger as a healthy expression.
Is There a Healthy Expression of Anger?
From the research I’ve looked at, we all have a need to express anger. It’s healthy, that
As Fred Rogers said, “emotions are mentionable and manageable.” Kind guy. Makes me want to be his neighbor.
The two most common ways we express our anger in unhealthy ways is by misdirecting or stuffing it down.
When we misdirect our anger it comes out like drama.
According to David Richo drama is part of the neurotic ego and anger is part of a healthy adult lifestyle. It’s what we do with it that counts. See what he says from his book How to Be an Adult.
| Drama | Anger |
| Scares the Hearer | Informs the hearer and creates attention in the hearer |
| Is meant to silence the other | Is meant to communicate with the other |
| Masks the dashed expectation or fear of not being in control with a false sense of control | Contains sadness or disappointment and these are |
| Blames the other for what one feels | Takes Responsibility for this feeling as one’s own |
| Is a strategy that masks a demand that the other change | Also asks for change but allows the other to choose. |
| Is violent, aggressive, out of control, | Is nonviolent, always in control and within safe limits |
| Represses true feeling | Expresses an assertive response |
| Is held onto and endures with resentment | Is brief and then let’s go with a sense of closure. |
Is There Such a Thing as Spiritual Anger?
Spiritual Anger and spiritual hostility are common occurrences when counseling people who are suffering. Next to anxiety, the most common issue I see as a Spiritual Health Practitioner is spiritual anger.
Spiritual anger is when you feel angry toward your divine center (ultimate concern, higher power, G-d, etc.). Although it carries many of the same physiological responses, spiritual anger differs in its content.
We’re relational creatures and if you have a relationship to an Ultimate Source (or you consider yourself spiritual), then you will get angry at times.
One of the first things I try to tell those who feel guilty for feeling angry with their Spiritual Center, is “you can’t have intimacy without some honest anger.”
Cancer patients feel angry with G-d for allowing this to happen. Victims of abuse wonder where their Higher Power was. Those of divorce in spiritual communities feel frustrated with the Universe that brought them to their partner.
The truth is, if you are a spiritual person, then you will at some point get angry in your spirit.
If you don’t identify with being a spiritual person, then you may have experienced existential anger. That’s when you feel all of existence is out to get you or has failed your expectations.
Some may say that hostility is an existential problem, because usually hostile people see everyone and everything as an enemy to their progress.
For now, I leave you with Maya Angelou, who found a way to avoid bitterness and hostility. She resourced her anger for action. May you do so this week:
Maya Angelou
“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
Related Questions
What’s the difference between hostility and aggression? The main difference between aggression and hostility is that aggression is a behavior and hostility is an attitude. Aggression is more basic and contextual. When you feel hurt by a perceived insult, aggression seeks to inflict damage but is temporary in duration. While hostility is chronic anger, an attitude cultivated over time.
What is an example of aggression? Some examples of aggressive behavior are physical violence, biting, hitting, kicking. There’s also verbal aggression such as sending threatening messages through emails, social media, or making threats against another person’s life – swearing and shouting.
