Firefighters, hostility, and satisfaction with life, job and marital relationship

Hostility is associated with negative health outcomes. Empirical research has indicated that high levels of hostility, in association with personal characteristics, may result in either aggressive actions and re-actions, or isolation and disengagement. The purpose of this study was to investigate hostility and its influence on mental health, overall satisfaction with life, job, and marital relationship, and cardiovascular health of professional firefighters. The study was analyzed in the context of Social Ecology Theory exploring how personality, spousal relationship, and social factors influenced the relationship between work and health. Firefighters were invited to engage their romantic partners in the study assessing how work stress impacted intimate relationship. Data analyses involved structural equation modeling, as well as repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance and multilinear regressions. The results indicated that work stress and exposure to toxic environment and hazardous conditions have a negative impact on the mental health and overall satisfaction of firefighters, but not on hostility. When controlling for personality, openness to experience revealed a significant relationship between work and hostility. No significant relationships were observed either between hostility and domestic conflict or between hostility and cardiovascular health.