Recreating cardiovascular responses with rumination: The effects of a delay between harassment and its recall

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Abstract

Cardiovascular responses occur not only in the immediate presence of stressors, but also while later thinking about those experiences. Evidence suggests that these delayed responses, such as those produced by ruminating about prior angering experiences, may play an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. We examine whether physiological consequences of rumination depend on the delay between a stressor and its recall, and whether the magnitude of physiological responses decreases with repetition. Twenty-two participants experienced a three-minute harassment stressor, and later spent 3 min vividly recalling the task. Half the subjects returned for the first time after a week, and half returned after half an hour, and then also after a week. Blood pressure and heart rate were monitored during a baseline period, and during each session's stressor or rumination period. Results indicated that rumination was sufficient to elevate blood pressure (systolic and diastolic) above baseline, that the delay made no difference to the magnitude of the elevation, but that the second rumination seemed to be associated with a smaller response than the first. Response to the stressor was not associated with rumination responses, but the first rumination response was significantly correlated with the second. The effects of stress may be experienced long after the actual stressor is passed, and people who experience large delayed responses may not be the same as those with high initial responses. The “hot” affective portion of rumination may not be diminished by the passage of time, but by prior recreation of the experience.

Section snippets

Overview

On the first visit to the laboratory, all participants completed a mental arithmetic task with harassment while their blood pressure and heart rate were monitored. On the second visit to the laboratory, participants were asked to recall as vividly as possible the arithmetic task they had experienced on the previous visit. Half of the subjects (those in the Immediate condition) returned to the laboratory for the recall task 30 min after the first session. The other half (Delayed condition)

Visit 1: mental arithmetic stressor

The average systolic blood pressure during baseline was 106.2 mm Hg, the diastolic blood pressure was 65.9 mm Hg and the average heart rate was 77.5 bpm. There were no significant differences in baseline levels of blood pressure or heart rate between the groups (all t(20)'s < .36; p's > .73).

The mental arithmetic stressor task produced sizeable blood pressure and heart rate responses. The increases from baseline for the groups are shown in Fig. 1. The mean increase for the Immediate group was

Discussion

The results shed light on two aspects of the relation between a harassment stressor and the later physiological response to the recall of that stressor. First, the data suggest that recall of even a relatively minor stressor such as the one we employed in this study is associated with increased blood pressure at recall both 30 min later and 1 week later. Second, our results suggest that the size of this blood pressure response does not diminish after a week's delay. Participants who were asked

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