On the one hand, these reports do reflect objective health status and these reports deserve to be taken serious. On the other hand, these reports are also influenced by subjective perceptions, which do not correspond to the objective health status. The exaggerated reporting of symptoms by neurotic individuals is a problem for the assessment of health by means of self-reports. The results are mixed. One reason for the inconsistent findings could be the poor validity of personality questionnaires.
Several factors can attenuate the validity of hostility measures.
For example, participants may be unable to recall accurately how often they get angry. Another reason could be social desirable responding. Normally, social desirable responding is not a great concern. However, when patients are recruited for a study on CHD, they know that anger is considered undesirable and they may be tempted to misreport their hostility levels. Only a few studies have taken this problem serious.