Cardiovascular reactivity, stress, and personal emotional salience: Choose your tasks carefully.

ABSTRACT: Both greater cardiovascular reactivity and lesser reactivity ("blunting") to laboratory stressors are linked to poor health outcomes, including among people who have a history of traumatic experiences. In a sample of recently separated and divorced adults (N = 96), this study examined whether differences in cardiovascular reactivity might be explained by differences in the personal emotional salience of the tasks and trauma history. Participants were assessed for trauma history, current distress related to their marital dissolution, and cardiovascular reactivity during two tasks, a serial subtraction math stressor task and a divorce-recall task. Participants with a greater trauma history evidenced less blood pressure reactivity to the serial subtraction task (a low personal emotional salie

SUBMITTER: Bourassa KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9283235 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature