Illnesses, Accidents, and Alcohol Use as Functions of the Arousing Quality and Pleasantness of Life Changes

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Abstract
Life changes were rated for their arousing quality and pleasantness-unpleasantness. Number of life changes and arousing quality of life changes correlated .92 and both were positively related to a composite measure of physical, psychosomatic, and psychological symptoms, incidence of accidents, and alcohol use. Nonscreeners, i.e., more arousable persons, experienced more illnesses, as did females who are generally more arousable than males. More dominant persons had more accidents. Tests of interactions among the independent variables yielded significant effects for the composite measure of illness and for accidents but not for alcohol use. The combination of nonscreening, i.e., arousable temperament, and arousing life changes was particularly detrimental to health. Also, a pleasant temperament helped alleviate the detrimental effect of unpleasant life changes on health. The hypothesized adverse effect of unpleasant and arousing life changes was obtained for the accident rates of nonscreeners but not of screeners. Thus, the interactive contribution of displeasure with high arousal was significant only when extremely high arousal resulted from the combination of arousing conditions and an arousable temperament. Finally, an interaction of stimulus screening × trait dominance showed dominant nonscreeners to be more accident prone than submissive nonscreeners.