Differences in personality between sustained hypertension, isolated clinic hypertension and normotension

Contribution of Social Psychology Research to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Bibliometric and Content Analysis of Spanish Publications

This study analyses the publications by Spanish institutions indexed by the Web of Science in the thematic category of "Psychology, Social". The objectives are to determine whether such publications address topics related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to what extent the research conducted contributes to achieving the goals proposed in each of the SDGs. Publications were classified by their relationship with the SDGs using OSDG tool, and an in-depth content analysis was performed to validate the results. A corpus of 1,632 papers published by Spanish institutions was identified. The results show that 34% percent of the papers address matters related to the SDGs; 23% of these are related to Goal 3 (good health and well-being), and 5%, to Goal 5 (gender equality). For achieving SDG 3 goals, the reviewed papers evidence the need that institutions, governments and society to provide, especially for children and adolescents, healthy social environments to prevent harmful social relationships while improving individual skills to manage emotions in everyday life and promoting cultural integration. Regarding SDG 5, it should be a priority the application of effective strategies to change stereotypes, assigned sexual roles and sexist attitudes that sustain inequality and violence against women.

Differences in emotional personality traits and stress between sustained hypertension and normotension

This study was aimed at determining whether there are differences in emotional personality traits and psychosocial stress between hypertension and normotension. From a large community sample of adults, 14 individuals having hypertension and showing clinic blood pressures (BP) >or=140/90 mm Hg and self-measured BPs >or=135/85 mm Hg (sustained hypertensives) were selected and compared with a sex- and age-matched group of 14 individuals with normotension (clinic BPs <140/90 mm Hg and self-measured BPs <135/85 mm Hg) on measures of trait anxiety, trait depression, trait anger and stress derived from standardized questionnaires. There were no significant differences between hypertensives and normotensives on trait anger, but, in line with hypotheses, the sustained hypertensive group showed higher levels of trait anxiety, trait depression and stress than did the normotensive group. A discriminant analysis revealed that trait depression was the most important psychological variable to discriminate between sustained hypertension and normotension. Results provide support to the hypothesized relationship of emotional personality traits and stress with hypertension, and underscore the need to define hypertension on the basis of both clinic and home/ambulatory BP measurements and to simultaneously evaluate all relevant negative emotional constructs, when conducting research on psychological factors in hypertension.