The Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat: Using the Heart to Measure the Mind

Abstract

The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS) holds that during active goal pursuit, psychological processes reliably lead to specific patterns of cardiovascular responses. Because psychological experience during goal pursuit is not otherwise easily accessible, using cardiovascular responses to infer psychological states can provide valuable insight. In this context, challenge results from evaluating high resources and low demands, whereas threat results from evaluating low resources and high demands. Both challenge and threat lead the heart to beat faster and harder than during rest, but challenge results in dilation in arteries and more blood pumped, whereas threat results in constriction and less blood pumped. This article summarizes the BPS, presents recent research applications, and discusses remaining questions and future directions, including how research from other theoretical perspectives may clarify the nature of task engagement and how the BPS can inform the study of resilience to stressors.As college students wait, pencil in hand and scantron ready, for the final exam in a course to be passed out, and then begin working on that exam once they receive it, consider how their bodies might respond. All students remain seated at their desks, perhaps moving only enough to fill in their answers on the page in front of them; none are likely to stand up until they have completed the exam. Despite this, their hearts may be beating as fast and as hard as though they were running around campus. The culmination of a cascade of physiological changes these students may be experiencing during their final exam, such cardiovascular responses not only suggest that the body is at a state of physical readiness but also may reveal what has occurred in the mind to precipitate those physiological changes. In other words, cardiovascular responses can be used to infer psychological states and processes, which lends them great utility as a methodological tool for testing research questions in social and personality psychology. The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat accounts for such a relationship between physiology and psychology. In this article, a description of the model is followed by a review of recent research and a discussion of remaining questions and future directions. The Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and ThreatThe biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS;Blascovich, 2008a;Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996) provides a theoretical rationale for a connection between specific psychological states and patterns of physiological responses. Importantly, the BPS holds that it is psychological processes that lead to physiological changes. These physiological responses occur quickly -in a matter of seconds -and affect the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Cardiovascular changes, in turn, can be measured relatively easily and noninvasively, with negligible discomfort for research participants. This provides the opportunity to measure cardiovascular responses and reliably infer the psychologic...

How to Improve Adolescent Stress Responses

“…A fundamental principle of the BPS model of challenge and threat is the idea that cognitive appraisals of situational demands and coping resources interact to determine stress responses in motivated-performance contexts (Blascovich & Mendes, 2010; Gross, 2015; Jamieson, Mendes, et al, 2013; Mendes & Park, 2014; Seery, 2013). When individuals perceive that they possess sufficient resources to cope with the situational demands posed by the stressor(s), they experience challenge .…”

“…These are: (1) the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat , which provides a mechanistic framework for understanding social stress responses (Blascovich, 2008; Blascovich & Mendes, 2010; Jamieson, Mendes, & Nock, 2013; Seery, 2013), and (2) implicit theories of personality (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995; Yeager & Dweck, 2012), which are beliefs that shape individuals’ interpretations of the meaning of social stressors they face. Specifically, we examined the effects of an intervention targeting implicit theories of personality on the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral processes well-studied in BPS models.…”

Examining the antecedents of challenge and threat states: The influence of perceived required effort and support availability

“…These evaluations are said 56 to be dynamic, relatively automatic (i.e., unconscious), and only occur 57 when an individual is actively engaged in a situation (indexed by in-58 creases in heart rate and decreases in the cardiac pre-ejection period; 59 Seery, 2013). The BPSM specifies that when evaluated personal coping 60 resources match or exceed situational demands, a challenge state oc-61 curs.…”

“…Two of these potential antecedents, perceived required effort and 121 support availability, have been discussed in recent reviews (McGrath 122 et al, 2011;Seery, 2013). Although research has shown that expending 123 greater effort during a task is characterized by increased heart rate and 124 systolic blood pressure (see Wright and Kirby, 2001) are two anchors of a single bipolar continuum (Seery, 2011).…”

A System-of-Systems Framework for Improved Human, Ecologic and Economic Well-Being

“…Nevertheless, in everyday conversation, but without firm evidence, factor K is regarded like a person with a "good heart" or like a "wicked person". Indirect evidence suggests that collective psychological processes characterizing the biopsychosocial model during active goal pursuit may indeed be instrumental in influencing cardiovascular responses [40]. That is, the integrated mental engine has a connection to the physical heart without clear evidence about the causal relationships.…”