The study examined whether cardiovascular responses to active or passive coping tasks and single or multiple tasks predicted changes in resting blood pressure (BP) over a ten-month period. Heart rate (HR), BP, cardiac output (CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) were measured at rest, and during mental stress tests (mental arithmetic, speech, and cold pressor tasks). A total of 104 eligible participants participated in the initial study, and 77 (74.04%) normotensive adult participants’ resting BP were re-evaluated at ten-month follow-up. Regression analyses indicated that after adjustment for baseline BP, initial age, gender, body mass index, family history of cardiovascular disease, and current cigarette smoking, heighted systolic blood pressure (SBP) and HR responses to an active coping task (mental arithmetic) were associated with increased future SBP (ΔR2 = .060, ΔR2 = .045, respectively). Further, aggregated SBP responsivity (over the three tasks) to the predictor models resulted in significant, but smaller increases in ΔR2 accounting for .040 of the variance of follow-up SBP. These findings suggest that cardiovascular responses to active coping tasks predict future SBP. Further, compared with single tasks, the findings revealed that SBP responses to three tasks were less predictive compared to an individual task (i.e., mental arithmetic). Of importance, hemodynamic reactivity (namely CO and TPR) did not predict future BP suggesting that more general psychophysiological processes (e.g., inflammation, platelet aggregation) may be implicated, or that BP, but not hemodynamic reactivity may be a marker of hypertension.

Cardiovascular effects of social evaluation, evaluator status, and monetary reward were examined in participants presented with a challenge that allowed them to work as hard as they pleased (unfixed conditions) or called for a low level of effort (fixed conditions). In Experiment 1, evaluation was found to potentiate systolic pressure and heart rate responses insofar as the evaluator had status where the challenge was unfixed, but to have no impact on the responses where the challenge was fixed. In Experiment 2, reward value was found to potentiate the responses where the challenge was unfixed, but not where it was fixed. The main findings confirm and extend results from a previous experiment, and broaden the base of empirical support for the suggestion that active coping will be proportional to success importance where performance is unconstrained.

An experiment with N = 56 university students investigated the joint effects of manipulated mood state and task difficulty on cardiovascular and electrodermal reactivity during mood inductions and performance on a letter cancellation task. We tested our theory-based prediction that moods per se do not involve autonomic adjustments whereas mood and task difficulty interact during task performance to determine autonomic reactivity with respect to active coping. Specifically, we anticipated for an easy task weaker reactivity in a positive mood (due to low subjective demand) than in a negative mood (due to high subjective demand). Conversely, we expected, for a difficult task, stronger reactivity in a positive mood (high, but not yet too high, subjective demand) than in a negative mood (too high subjective demand). Adjustments of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and tonic skin conductance level described exactly the predicted pattern. Furthermore, task performance was associated with autonomic reactivity in the difficult conditions.