When enhanced awareness threatens: Interactive effects of domain‐specific awareness and acceptance manipulations on cardiovascular indices of challenge and threat

Abstract

Stress promotes the development of numerous disorders (Lovallo, 2015), including cardiovascular disease, which remains the leading cause of death in the United States (Kochanek et al., 2017). A major link between stressors and illness lies in the potentially damaging effects of biological stress responses (McEwen, 1998). Episodes of acute stress can activate peripheral stress response cascades like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical and sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axes, resulting in the release of primary stress mediators that can modify the functioning of various biological processes.

Group‐based flow: The influence of cardiovascular synchronization and identifiability

“…Challenge and threat are—just like flow—hypothesized to result from a balance between the demands of a task, and the resources that the person has to deal with these demands. When there is a balance between the demands of the task and the skills of the person, a challenge motivational state arises, whereas when the demands of the task outweigh the person's resources a threat motivational state arises (Blascovich, 2008; Blascovich & Mendes, 2010; Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996; Manigault et al, 2020; Mendes & Park, 2014; Seery, 2011; Wormwood et al, 2019). Thus, the shared appraisal profile of flow as described by flow theory on the one hand and challenge as described by the BPS‐CT on the other, makes the challenge pattern a likely candidate to represent a relevant physiological dimension of flow (see also Scheepers & Keller, 2022).…”