The role of anger regulation on perceived stress status and physical health

The purpose of this exploratory study was to cross-culturally examine associations among three different anger regulation strategies, namely, anger-in (AI), anger out (AO), and anger control (AC), perceived stress status as the psychological antecedent, and the number of claimed chronic medical conditions as the physical health. Large samples of American and Japanese adults participated in this study. The results show the cultural differences that are consistent with previous findings in the literature while extending them to the association with physical health. Consequently, culturally different path models were identified. In this study, we found that anger regulation affects perceived stress, which in turn, was associated with physical health. Discussion of these findings and their implications is provided.