Negative emotions and acute physiological responses to stress

Abstract

One pathway through which stressors are thought to influence physiology is through their effects on emotion. We used metaanalytic statistical techniques with data from nine studies to test the effects of acute laboratory stressors ( speech, star mirror-image tracing, hand grip) on emotional (undifferentiated negative emotion, angel; anxiety) and cardiovascular (CV) response. In all of the studies, participants responded to stressors with both increased CV response and increased negative emotion. Increases in negative emotion were associated with increases in CV response across tasks, howevel; these associations were small. The range of variance accounted for was between 2% and 12%. Thus, the contribution of negative emotion, as assessed in these studies, to physiological responses to acute laboratory stressors was limited. Although these results raise questions about the role of emotion in mediating stress-elicited physiological responses, the nature of the acute laboratory stress paradigm may contribute to the lack of a strong association.

Effects of social stressors on cardiovascular reactivity in black and white women

“…Finally, on the basis of recommendations from a recent review of the literature on perceived racism and cardiovascular reactivity (13), we explored whether psychological distress in response to the stressors mediated racial differences in cardiovascular reactivity to the different social stressors. Both theoretical models and empirical evidence suggest that negative emotions may play a role in cardiovascular reactivity (19).…”

“…We used a design in which all participants were exposed to identical stimuli to avoid confounds associated with using different stimuli for different groups. In addition, the study included a control speaking condition to adjust for the effects of speaking on reactivity (17)(18)(19), presented the speech tasks in counterbalanced order, and included measures of cardiovascular reactivity to the stressors as well as recovery following the stressors.…”

Pain catastrophizing, physiological indexes, and chronic pain severity: tests of mediation and moderation models

“…For example, pain catastrophizing is associated with elevated negative affect (Hirsh et al 2007), which in turn is often associated with heightened cardiovascular stress reactivity (Burns 1995;Feldman et al 1999;Kamarck et al 1998;Prkachin et al 1999). Prior work indicates that elevations in systolic blood pressure trigger endogenous analgesic mechanisms through functional links between the cardiovascular and pain regulatory systems (e.g., Bruehl and Chung 2004;Edwards et al 2001Edwards et al , 2003Ghione 1996;Rau and Elbert 2001).…”

Revisiting the lack of association between affect and physiology: Contrasting between-person and within-person analyses.

“…Although experimental manipulations often increase self-reported negative affect (e.g., the experience of anger) and influence physiological responses (e.g., raise blood pressure [BP]), the relationship between the changes in affect and physiology is often statistically nonsignificant or modest in magnitude. For example, a meta-analysis indicated that changes in negative affect due to a stressor only accounted for 2-12% of changes in cardiovascular responses despite large changes in cardiovascular responses after the stressor (Feldman et al, 1999). If participants report more negative affect as a result of a stressor, and their bodies react to the same stressor, then one would reasonably expect that the changes in affect and physiology would be strongly associated.…”