| Summary: | Studies have revealed associations between established psychosocial factors and
cardiovascular health, but the magnitude of effects remains small, and findings are fraught with
inconsistencies. Recently, several putative psychological risk factors for cardiovascular disease,
namely social support seeking, sociotropy, and Type-D personality, defensiveness and sex roles,
have been proposed to further elucidate the relationship between personality and disease. The
purpose of the present study was to examine how such emerging constructs relate to laboratory
indices of cardiovascular health compared to more established psychosocial risk factors, i.e.,
hostility and social support.
173 undergraduates (87 female, 86 male) completed a stress protocol involving a mental
arithmetic task (serial subtractions of seven) while receiving scripted harassing comments.
Blood pressure and heart rate were measured both prior to and during the stressful task. The
relationships between personality and both resting and reactivity levels were examined.
Reactivity was defined as the amount of change between resting blood pressure and heart rate
levels and levels reached during the task. Contrary to prediction, hostility was associated with
lower resting blood pressure, while social support was unrelated to cardiovascular responses.
Emerging personality constructs demonstrated consistent associations with physiology.
Masculinity was associated with lower resting heart rate [β = -.26, p < .01]. Support seeking was
associated with less SBP reactivity to the task (r = -.15, g = .05). Sociotropy was related to
dampened reactivity to stress [β = -.21, p < .05 for DBP; β = -.22, p < .05 for HR]. Males who
reported greater social inhibition, a dimension of the Type-D personality, showed greater
reactivity to the lab stressor [β = .41, p < .01 for SBP; β = .31, p < .05 for DBP]. Impression
management was also associated with resting blood pressure, but gender differences in the
pattern of associations were noted. Thus, the present results confirm the need to move away from
global personality dimensions in order to explain better how personality can exert beneficial or
deleterious effects on health. However, the direction o f results was not always consistent with
our predictions, indicating that these specific personality constructs would benefit from further
refinement.
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