Aggressive verbal behaviour as a function of experimentally induced anger in persons with psoriasis

The importance of psychosocial factors on the etiology and fluctuating disease activity of psoriasis has been discussed in recent years. The present experiment investigated whether psoriatics in an anger-inducing situation show less aggressive verbal behaviour than average person. Twenty-six psoriatics and 26 matched healthy controls were randomly assigned to either an anger-inducing or a non-anger-inducing social situation. The experimental conditions were arranged so that the persons were confronted with either negative, derogatory, or positive, favorable feedback on eight characteristics (intelligence, appearance, maturity, tolerance, honesty, friendliness, humor, and helpfulness). Standardized feedback was given by a confederate of the experimenter. Immediately after the feedback was received by the subjects the photo hand test (PHT) was applied. The PHT is an item-analyzed, validated projective test for aggression. Two independent raters categorized the subjects' responses into six mutually exclusive categories, including a category for responses with aggressive content. 2 x 2 analysis of variance (psoriatics vs controls; anger-induced vs non-anger induced) were calculated for the aggressive responses and the acting-out score (AOS). The results showed a significant interaction, suggesting that psoriatics did indeed exhibit fewer verbal aggression responses under anger-inducing circumstances than the controls.