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 salience task) when compared to participants with less trauma history. In contrast, participants with a greater trauma history evidenced higher blood pressure reactivity to the divorce‐recall task, but only if they also reported more divorce‐related distress (high personal emotional salience). These associations were not significant for heart rate reactivity. Among people with a history of more traumatic experiences, a task with low personal salience was associated with a lower blood pressure response, whereas a task with higher personal emotional salience was associated with a higher blood pressure response. Future studies examining cardiovascular reactivity would benefit from determining the personal emotional salience of tasks, particularly for groups that have experienced stressful life events or trauma.

Life event stress is associated with blunted cardiovascular responding to both personally salient and personally non‐salient laboratory tasks

“…The present study identified that blunted cardiovascular reactions to stress are associated with life event stress in a sample of young, healthy adults, regardless of the personal salience of the laboratory task used. The findings contradict Bourassa and Sbarra's (2022) suggestion that the type of task chosen to assess reactivity in the laboratory may be an explanatory factor in the now large literature identifying blunted cardiovascular reactions to stress as associated with ill-health. This addressed a limitation in Bourassa and Sbarra's study where the findings were based on a laboratory task that was not experienced as stressful for the entire sample; life event stress showed blunted reactions to the combined task (as reported by Gallagher et al, 2018 and confirmed in the present study), as well as showing blunted reactions to both the personally salient and non-salient tasks.…”

“…While the personally salient task did not relate directly to the construct being measured (i.e., life events stress), it does offer a rebuttal to Bourassa and Sbarra's (2022) argument that it is important to choose personally salient tasks in reactivity research, particularly within the blunted model of reactivity. In this study, the stress-task was perceived as stressful for the entire sample, with the personally salient task perceived as more embarrassing.…”

“…Recently, the methodological details of how the blunted reactivity model arose have been queried. Bourassa and Sbarra ( 2022 ) have argued that the personal emotional salience of the stress‐tasks used in the literature may be an important moderator of the magnitude of the cardiovascular reaction to stress. Using a sample of 109 recently separated or divorced adults, a task with low personal salience was associated with blunted cardiovascular reactions; however, using a high personally salient task, greater divorce‐related distress was associated with higher blood pressure reactivity.…”

“…While the Bourassa and Sbarra's ( 2022 ) study is a welcome addition to the reactivity field, the data were limited by a number of over‐looked elements. Firstly, the divorce‐recall task did not elicit a significant cardiovascular response within the entire sample; that is, for the entire sample, recalling their divorce was not a physiologically stressful task for the group.…”

Social integration: Implications for the association between childhood trauma and stress responsivity.

“…While these tasks are commonly used within CVR research, it is worth noting that past research examining the effect of trauma on CVR have observed differences in responses with respect to the type of task used. For example, Bourassa and Sbarra (2022) showed that a task with low personal salience (e.g., serial subtraction math stressor) was associated with a lower blood pressure response among people with a history of more traumatic experiences, whereas a task with higher personal emotional salience (e.g., a divorce-recall task) was associated with a higher blood pressure response. Although significant effects are noted within the current sample, perhaps more pronounced effects may be evident if emotional-provocation tasks were used.…”