Cardiac Vagal Tone, defensiveness, and motivational style
Section snippets
Cardiac Vagal Tone, defensiveness, and motivational style
A growing body of psychophysiological research has focused on identifying autonomic correlates of temperament and health vulnerabilities. Cardiac Vagal Tone has received increasing attention, as an index of the extent to which the vagus nerve mediates parasympathetic influence on the heart and other key organs (Porges, 1995). Accumulating evidence suggests that vagal tone may represent an important underlying mechanism in emotional, self-regulatory, and behavioral processes (Porges, 1991,
Participants
Nine hundred twenty-one undergraduates had previously completed a survey that included a measure of defensiveness, the short form of the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Inventory (MC; Reynolds, 1982). Equal numbers of high- and low-defensive participants, based upon a median split, were randomly sampled to be recruited by telephone for an experiment on “personality characteristics,” for which they would receive credits toward a course in introductory psychology. Participants who were
Results
Descriptive statistics for all measures are presented in Table 1. Relationships between vagal measures and other variables of interest were analyzed initially through inspection of the zero-order correlation matrix. Three measures of vagal influence were examined: RSA at baseline, RSA suppression (baseline RSA minus RSA during task), and RSA recovery (RSA during relaxation minus RSA during task). Subtractions for these latter measures were performed such that larger values were indicative of
Discussion
The present data provided modest support for the hypotheses. Results revealed that subjects who showed less suppression of vagal tone during a stressful task were higher in social anxiety than subjects who showed robust suppression. Second, low-defensive subjects exhibited higher vagal tone across all tasks. Third, subjects with greater behavioral activation, particularly with respect to potential rewards, exhibited greater vagal tone. Finally, behavioral inhibition scores interacted with
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Kelli Glass and Lauren Stern for assistance in data collection and entry, and Jim Coan for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this mansucript. We are indebted to Steve Porges for generously providing us with the MX Edit software and manual.
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2017, Biological PsychologyCitation Excerpt :However, a few studies have found CVCPHA to decrease during recovery from adverse (e.g., disgust-provoking) stimuli which had previously provoked CVCPHA increases (Bosch et al., 2001; Sokhadze, 2007). Also, empirical evidence has consistently shown that prolonged cardiac vagal reactivity (i.e., inability to quickly return to CVC baseline levels after stress) is linked to maladaptive traits, such as higher emotion regulation difficulties (Berna et al., 2014), higher social anxiety (Movius & Allen, 2005), and lower ego-resiliency (Spangler, 1997). For instance, CVCPHA significantly increased when recovering from an anger-provoking elicitation among individuals reporting low trait difficulties in ER but not in individuals reporting high difficulties (Berna et al., 2014).
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2017, Personality and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :On the one hand, several studies have reported evidence that higher levels of defensiveness are associated with poorer health outcomes. For example, defensiveness has been linked to heightened blood pressure reactivity and poorer parasympathetic function (Movius & Allen, 2005; Nyklícek, Vingerhoets, Van Heck, & Van Limpt, 1998). In one study, defensiveness predicted a seven-fold increase in hypertension over a three-year period (Rutledge, Linden, & Davies, 2000).