Avoidant Personality Disorder Symptoms and Cardiovascular Reactivity to Psychological Stress Tasks With Increasing Cognitive Demands

Abstract

Abstract. This study aimed to investigate whether and how avoidant personality disorder symptoms are related to cardiovascular reactivity to stress tasks with different levels of cognitive demands. The revised Chinese edition of the avoidant personality disorder subscale of Personality Diagnosed Questionnaire-4+ (PDQ-4+) was administered to 222 undergraduate students randomly assigned to psychological stress tasks (i.e., mental arithmetic tasks) with low, moderate, or high cognitive demands (manipulated by task difficulty), during which their physiological data were continuously collected. Results showed that avoidant personality disorder symptoms and cognitive demands of tasks interactively predicted systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) reactivity. In specific, avoidant personality disorder symptoms were not associated with SBP reactivity under the low- and moderate-demand conditions and DBP reactivity under the low-demand condition but were associated with blunted SBP reactivity under the high-demand condition and blunted DBP reactivity under the moderate- and high-demand conditions. These findings indicate that the association between avoidant personality disorder symptoms and cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress is contingent on the cognitive demands of tasks, which have potential implications for physical health.

Understanding stress regulation in relation to personality traits: The role of Detachment and Negative Affect

“…With respect to physiological responses to social evaluative stress, we observed that individuals with high-trait Detachment and Negative Affect had a more blunted heart rate reactivity compared to the low-trait group. This was as expected, given that previous research also found this relationship in individuals with CPD (Deckers et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2022). Blunted reactivity to psychosocial stressors is suggested to reflect deficits in the fronto-limbic pathway in the brain, which results in dysregulation of motivation and behavior (Carroll et al, 2017;Ginty et al, 2013).…”

“…Although two of these studies showed exaggerated emotional reactivity to stress in individuals with CPD compared to a control group (Aleknaviciute et al, 2016;Deckers et al, 2015), results concerning physiological outcomes have been contradictory. On the one hand, blunted physiological reactivity in response to stress has been observed in individuals with CPD (Deckers et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2022). On the other hand, the study of Aleknaviciute et al (2016) showed stronger physiological reactivity in CPD individuals in response to stress compared to individuals with Borderline personality disorder (a Cluster B PD).…”

“…However, the influence of personality features of CPD on the psychophysiological response to psychosocial stress has not been sufficiently explored. To date, only three studies have reported assessments of psychophysiological responses to stress in CPD or symptoms related to CPD (Aleknaviciute et al, 2016;Deckers et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2022). Although two of these studies showed exaggerated emotional reactivity to stress in individuals with CPD compared to a control group (Aleknaviciute et al, 2016;Deckers et al, 2015), results concerning physiological outcomes have been contradictory.…”