Threat-related motivational disengagement: Integrating blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress into the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat

Abstract

Background: The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat specifies a challenge-threat continuum where favorable demand-resource evaluations, efficient cardiovascular responses, and superior performance characterize challenge; and maladaptive outcomes like clinical depression characterize threat states. The model also specifies task engagement, operationalized as heart rate and ventricular contractility increases, as a prerequisite for challenge and threat states. The blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress literature describes reductions of these increases and associates them with problems like clinical depression. Objectives: To determine whether blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress has implications for challenge and threat theory. Methods: We review and synthesize the literatures on blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress and the biopsychosocial model. Results: Blunted cardiovascular reactivity appears not to reflect a physiological inability to respond to stress. Rather, it reflects a contextually dependent motivational dysregulation and reduced reactivity to stress consistent with deficient task engagement in the biopsychosocial model. Conclusion:We argue that blunted cardiovascular reactivity represents deficient task engagement, and more generally, motivational disengagement due to threat states. Our biopsychosocial model-based approach conceptualizes this motivational disengagement as a tendency to avoid motivated performance situations. This tendency may represent a defense mechanism against subsequent threat and might explain associations with disorders like clinical depression.

Blunted cardiovascular reactivity may serve as an index of psychological task disengagement in the motivated performance situations

“…Precisely, we tested whether reduced or absent task engagement at the psychological level (i.e., motivation to successfully engage the competitive situation) was associated with blunted cardiovascular reactivity to performance. This hypothesis was based on a recent review 1 that integrated the phenomenon of blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress 2 with the predictions of the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat 3 . Although the models conceptualize the blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress as reduced or absent task engagement in motivated performance 2 , 3 , to date, no study has scrutinized these predictions in the sports domain.…”

“…According to the challenge and threat models, task engagement involves increased sympathetic activation in the autonomous nervous system, indicated by increased heart rate (HR) and by shortened pre-ejection period (PEP) relative to a pre-task resting baseline 10 . A lack of such cardiovascular responses is interpreted as task disengagement 1 . For instance, studies have shown that participants who made fewer attempts to complete a subsequent impossible puzzle responded to the task with lower cardiovascular reactivity 11 , 12 .…”

“…The threat-provoked motivational disengagement hypothesis 1 indicates that if an athlete performs poorly in a match and thinks that the next match will be an inevitable failure, then the athlete will lose goal relevance and consequently disengage from the task. If experienced chronically or severely, these negative consequences may result in stable motivational disengagement, that is, the general tendency to avoid similar future performance situations to prevent the aversive experience.…”

“…If experienced chronically or severely, these negative consequences may result in stable motivational disengagement, that is, the general tendency to avoid similar future performance situations to prevent the aversive experience. However, if a motivated performance situation is unavoidable (e.g., in an ongoing tournament or match), then motivational disengagement may result in worse performance relative to motivationally engaged individuals 1 . A study of academy soccer players supported this idea, as athletes exhibiting the cardiovascular signs of motivational disengagement performed worse than engaged athletes, even those athletes who exhibited a threat state 16 .…”

“…Furthermore, we explored the association between task engagement and performance outcomes in the multi-round performance in two ways: (1) how previous performance influences subsequent psychological task engagement and cardiovascular reactivity; and (2) how task engagement at both psychological and physiological level influences subsequent performance. Building upon theoretical models 1 , 3 , we formulated the following hypotheses. We expected that low motivation to engage with the performance (i.e., low psychological task engagement) would predict blunted cardiovascular reactivity (i.e., the lack of physiological task engagement as indicated by no change or a decrease in HR).…”