Hostility is a multidimensional construct that has been extensively studied. It has been shown that hostility affects cognitive (Shimojima et al., 2003), behavioral (Prkachin & Silverman, 2002), visual (Herridge, Mollet, Harrison, & Shenal, in press), somatosensory (Herridge, Harrison, & Demaree, 1997a), auditory (Demaree & Harrison, 1997a), motor (Demaree et al., 2002) and pre-motor functioning (Williamson & Harrison, 2003). In order to extend and integrate the present literature on hostility and the effects of negative emotional state on cognition, the present investigation used a cold pressor to induce a negative emotional/pain state in high and low hostile participants and measured. The subsequent effects on the acquisition of the Auditory Affective Verbal Learning Test (AAVLT; Snyder & Harrison, 1997) were measured. Blood pressure (BP) readings were taken before and after the cold pressor to examine cardiovascular regulation in high and low hostiles. Further, before the first trial participants were asked to predict the number of words that they would be able to recall on the first trial. After completion of the experiment participants were asked to estimate their performance relative to other participants. The measures were used to assess self-awareness in high and low hostile participants, which may be impaired in high hostile individuals (Demaree & Harrison, 1997b).

As expected, high hostiles learned negative emotional words significantly better than they learned positive words. Additionally, high hostiles were impaired in their acquisition of verbal material relative to low hostile participants. Low hostile participants learned more words faster and reached asymptote sooner. A significant primacy effect for negative emotional words and an overall better recall of negative information was found.

Analysis on each of the four groups of the experiment indicated that participants in the cold pressor group performed similar to the high hostile participants. The cold pressor facilitated negative learning and also slowed verbal learning relative to the no cold pressor group.

It was predicted that high and low hostiles would differ on baseline measures of systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) and that they would demonstrate increased cardiovascular reactivity in response to the cold pressor. These hypotheses were not supported. Self-awareness measures also failed to produce significance.

These results support the proposal that high hostiles differ from low hostiles in a number of modalities. They demonstrate the persistence of negative emotional material. Future work should address what kinds of implications these factors have on high hostiles in daily interactions