Upper Respiratory Tract Infections Increase Self-Rated Hostility and Distress

The authors administered a personality inventory, the Eysenck Personality Inventory and a distress scale, the Symptom Questionnaire, to all patients in a walk-in clinic of a general hospital during an influenza epidemic. Hostility, depression, anxiety and somatic symptoms were significantly higher in patients with upper respiratory tract infections ( p < .005); the majority scored in the range of psychiatric patients, regardless of whether patients had clinically classical influenza or merely symptoms and signs of another respiratory tract infection. There were no differences in the personality traits of extraversion or neuroticism between any of the groups, suggesting that hostility and distress were consequences of the viral infections and were largely unaffected by preexisting personality traits.