Trait dominance is associated with vascular cardiovascular responses, and attenuated habituation, to social stress

Social participation is associated with a habituated blood pressure response to recurrent stress

Lower cardiovascular reactivity is a proposed marker of motivational dysregulation and is related to a range of adverse behavioural and health outcomes. Social participation is a form of motivated behaviour and represents the frequency in which an individual engages in social activities. Low social participation has recently been linked to lower cardiovascular responses to acute psychological stress. With recent work emphasizing the importance of assessing adaptation of the cardiovascular response to recurrent stress, the aim of the current study is to build on previous work by examining the relationship between social participation and cardiovascular stress response adaptation. This study utilised data from the Pittsburgh Cold Study 3 (PCS 3). Two hundred and thirteen participants (M = 30.13; SD = 10.85) completed a social participation measure and had their systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR) monitored across two separate standardized stress testing sessions. The testing sessions consisted of a 20-minute baseline and a 15-minute stress task. Results indicated that higher levels of social participation were associated with greater blood pressure habituation to recurrent stress, extending previous work identifying that social participation was associated with higher cardiovascular responses to stress. The present study identifies that those reporting greater levels of social participation may show enhanced stress tolerance when exposed to recurrent stress.

Emotion regulation tendencies and cardiovascular responses to repeated acute psychological stress

Poor emotion regulation has been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) through maladaptive cardiovascular responses to psychological stress. However, there has been scant research examining the relationship between emotion regulation and habituation of cardiovascular responses to recurrent stress, which may be more directly applicable to the experience of stress in everyday life. The aims of the current study were to examine the associations between emotion regulation tendencies and cardiovascular stress reactivity, as well as habituation of cardiovascular reactivity across repeated stressors. A sample of 453 participants (mean (SD) age = 19.5 (1.3) years; 62 % women) completed a repeated stress paradigm, which consisted of two 10-minute baselines and two identical 4-minute stress tasks, separated by a 10-minute recovery period. Heart rate (HR) was measured continuously; systolic/diastolic blood pressures (SBP/DBP) were measured every 2 min. At the end of the visit, participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Results indicate that impulse control difficulties when distressed (a DERS subscale) were significantly associated with blunted SBP, DBP, and HR reactivity to both stressors, as well as impaired HR habituation across the stressors. None of the ERQ subscales (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression) were found to be associated with cardiovascular stress reactivity or habituation. The outcomes of this study demonstrate a potential underlying physiological pathway through which impulse control difficulties when distressed may contribute to CVD risk. This study also reveals the importance of extending traditional cardiovascular stress reactivity protocols to include multiple exposures of the same stress task.

Two Routes to Status, One Route to Health: Trait Dominance and Prestige Differentially Associate with Self-reported Stress and Health in Two US University Populations

Objective

Social status has been extensively linked to stress and health outcomes. However, two routes by which status can be earned - dominance and prestige - may not uniformly relate to lower stress and better health because of inherent behavioral and stress-exposure differences in these two routes.

Methods

In one exploratory and two preregistered studies, participants (total N = 978) self-reported their trait dominance and prestige and self-reported several stress and health outcomes.

Results

The meta-effects evident across the three studies indicate that higher trait dominance was associated with worse outcomes - higher stress, poorer physical and mental health, poorer behavioral health, poorer life satisfaction, higher negative affect (range of absolute values of non-zero correlations, |r| = [0.074, 0.315], ps < 0.021) - and higher trait prestige was associated with better outcomes - lower stress, better physical and mental health, better behavioral health, better life satisfaction, higher positive and lower negative mood (|r| = [0.134, 0.478], ps < 0.001). These effects remained evident (with few exceptions) after controlling for socioeconomic status, other status-relevant traits, or self-enhancing motives; associations with behavior relevant to the COVID19 pandemic generally were not robust.

Conclusions

This work indicates that evolved traits related to the preferred route by which status is earned likely impact self-reported stress and health outcomes. Future research is necessary to examine physiological and other objective indicators of stress and health in more diverse populations.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40750-022-00199-3.

Diversity of Hemodynamic Reactive Profiles across Persons—Psychosocial Implications for Personalized Medicine

This study analyzed the individual differences in hemodynamic time patterns and reactivity to cognitive and emotional tasks, and explored the diversity of psycho-physiological profiles that could be used for the personalized prediction of different diseases. An analysis of heart rate (HR)—blood pressure (BP) relationship patterns across time using cross-correlations (CCs) during a logical-mathematical task and a task recalling negative emotions (rumination) was carried out in a laboratory setting on 45 participants. The results showed maximum HR–BP CCs during the mathematical task significantly more positive than the maximum HR–BP CCs during the rumination task. Furthermore, our results showed a large variety of hemodynamic reactivity profiles across the participants, even when carrying out the same tasks. The most frequent type showed positive HR–BP CCs under cognitive activity, and several positive–negative HR–BP CCs cycles under negative emotional activity. In general terms, our results supported the main hypothesis. We observed some distinct time-based “coordination strategies” in the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system under emotional vs. cognitive loading. Overall, large individual, as well as situational, specificities in hemodynamic reactivity time patterns were seen. The possible relationships between this variety of profiles and different psychosocial characteristics, and the potential for integrative predictive health within the provision of highly personalized medicine, are discussed.

Adverse childhood experiences, sex, and cardiovascular habituation to repeated stress

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are robustly associated with later cardiovascular disease. Alterations in cardiovascular responses to stress may be an underlying mechanism. The present study examined whether ACEs predicted habituation of cardiovascular responses across two acute laboratory stress tasks, and whether this differed between men and women. During a single laboratory visit, 453 healthy young adults completed two identical stress-inducing protocols, each involving a 10-minute baseline and 4-minute acute psychological stress task. Heart rate (HR) and systolic/diastolic blood pressure (S/DBP) were recorded throughout. Participants also completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale. Cardiovascular responses habituated from the first to second stress task on average across the entire sample. However, women-but not men-with higher self-reported ACEs displayed less habituation of HR and DBP, but not SBP, across the stress tasks. Results suggest that ACEs may alter the body's ability to adaptively respond to stress exposures in adulthood, specifically in women.

Trait dominance and cardiovascular functioning during social stress

Cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stress has been found to be an important indicator of future ill health, and individual differences in personality have been posited to explain disparities in outcomes. Dominance is associated with forceful persons who desire hierarchy in social interactions. This study investigated dominance and CVR during social or asocial stressors. Sixty-one women, categorized as low, moderate, or high in dominance using the Jackson Personality Research Form, completed a social or asocial stressor while undergoing cardiovascular measurement during baseline, stressor, and recovery phases. A 3 × 2 × 3 analysis of covariance revealed a significant Phase × Stressor × Dominance interaction for systolic blood pressure (SBP). Women with lower and moderate dominance-but not women with higher dominance-exhibited greater SBP responses to stress in the social condition compared with the asocial condition. No significant difference was found for women with higher dominance, indicative of blunted SBP during the social stressor. During recovery, women with lower dominance had marginally elevated SBP in the social condition compared with the asocial condition. The current study extends prior knowledge of the association between dominance and CVR, such that greater dominance was associated with blunted SBP and lower dominance was associated with attenuated recovery to social stress.

Merging current health care trends: innovative perspective in aging care

Current trends in health care delivery and management such as predictive and personalized health care incorporating information and communication technologies, home-based care, health prevention and promotion through patients’ empowerment, care coordination, community health networks and governance represent exciting possibilities to dramatically improve health care. However, as a whole, current health care trends involve a fragmented and scattered array of practices and uncoordinated pilot projects. The present paper describes an innovative and integrated model incorporating and “assembling” best practices and projects of new innovations into an overarching health care system that can effectively address the multidimensional health care challenges related to aging patient especially with chronic health issues. The main goal of the proposed model is to address the emerging health care challenges of an aging population and stimulate improved cost-efficiency, effectiveness, and patients’ well-being. The proposed home-based and community-centered Integrated Healthcare Management System may facilitate reaching the persons in their natural context, improving early detection, and preventing illnesses. The system allows simplifying the health care institutional structures through interorganizational coordination, increasing inclusiveness and extensiveness of health care delivery. As a consequence of such coordination and integration, future merging efforts of current health care approaches may provide feasible solutions that result in improved cost-efficiency of health care services and simultaneously increase the quality of life, in particular, by switching the center of gravity of health delivery to a close relationship of individuals in their communities, making best use of their personal and social resources, especially effective in health delivery for aging persons with complex chronic illnesses.

Openness to experience and stress responsivity: An examination of cardiovascular and underlying hemodynamic trajectories within an acute stress exposure

The personality trait openness to experience has been implicated in health, and in particular cardiovascular wellbeing. In a sample of 62 healthy young female adults, the role of openness in cardiovascular responsivity during a stress exposure was examined. Traditionally, methodologies have averaged a stress exposure into a single reading. This may be limited in that it does not consider patterns of cardiovascular adaptation within a stress exposure. Continuous cardiovascular data were reduced to mean 10 second readings, with phases determined through examinations of shifts in responsivity between each 10 second pairing. Analyses revealed a significant linear interaction for openness across the entire exposure for systolic blood pressure, and cardiac output. A significant between-subjects effect for heart rate also emerged. Contrary to their lower counterparts, those highest in openness exhibited an increasingly myocardial hemodynamic response profile throughout the exposure. Comparisons of responsivity suggests adaptive stress response trajectories for those highest in openness. This study also provides evidence that an attenuation of myocardial responsivity may underpin blunted responsivity. This study provides a potential mechanism in reported openness-health associations.

Exogenous testosterone enhances cortisol and affective responses to social-evaluative stress in dominant men

Stress often precedes the onset of mental health disorders and is linked to negative impacts on physical health as well. Prior research indicates that testosterone levels are related to reduced stress reactivity in some cases but correlate with increased stress responses in other cases. To resolve these inconsistencies, we tested the causal influence of testosterone on stress reactivity to a social-evaluative stressor. Further, prior work has failed to consider status-relevant individual differences such as trait dominance that may modulate the influence of testosterone on responses to stressors. Participants (n=120 males) were randomly assigned to receive exogenous testosterone or placebo (n=60 testosterone treatment group) via topical gel prior to a well-validated social-evaluative stressor. Compared to placebo, testosterone significantly increased cortisol and negative affect in response to the stressor, especially for men high in trait dominance (95% confidence intervals did not contain zero). The findings suggest that the combination of high testosterone and exposure to status-relevant social stress may confer increased risk for stress-mediated disorders, particularly for individuals high in trait dominance.

Accelerometer-determined physical activity and the cardiovascular response to mental stress in children

OBJECTIVES

Cardiovascular reactivity has been associated with future hypertension and cardiovascular mortality. Higher physical activity (PA) has been associated with lower cardiovascular reactivity in adults, but little data is available in children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between PA and cardiovascular reactivity to mental stress in children.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

METHODS

This study sample included children from the Oswego Lead Study (n=79, 46% female, 9-11 years old). Impedance cardiography was performed while children participated in a stress response protocol. Children were also asked to wear Actigraph accelerometers on their wrists for 3 days to measure intensity and duration of PA and sedentary time.

RESULTS

In multivariable models, moderate to vigorous (MV) PA was associated with lower body mass index (BMI) percentile and lower total peripheral resistance (TPR) response to stress (beta=-0.025, p=0.02; beta=-0.009, p=0.05). After additional adjustment for BMI, MVPA was also associated with lower diastolic blood pressure response to stress (beta=-0.01, p=0.03). Total PA and sedentary time were not associated with BMI or cardiovascular responses to stress.

CONCLUSIONS

A modest, inverse relation of PA to vascular reactivity to mental stress was observed in children. These data provide confirmatory evidence that the promotion of PA recommendations for children are important for cardiovascular health.

Physiological responses to repeated stress in individuals with high and low trait resilience

This study examined individual differences in trait resilience in physiological recovery from, and physiological habituation to, repeated stress (i.e. public speaking). Eighty-two college students were categorized as either high (n=40) or low (n=42) on trait resilience, based on the scores of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Subjective and physiological data were collected from participants across seven laboratory stages: baseline, stress anticipation 1, stress 1, post-stress 1, stress anticipation 2, stress 2, and post-stress 2. Results indicated that high-trait-resilient participants exhibited more complete heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) recovery from the first and second stress anticipation exposures as compared to low-trait-resilient participants. High-trait-resilient participants demonstrated higher resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) coupled with more complete RSA recovery from the first and second stress anticipation exposures as compared to their low-trait-resilient counterparts. Moreover, high-trait-resilient participants exhibited pronounced SBP and DBP habituation across two successive stress anticipation exposures, with greater decreases in SBP and DBP reactivity to recurrent stress anticipation as compared to the low-trait-resilient participants. These findings suggest an adaptive physiological response pattern to recurrent stress in high-trait-resilient individuals.