Cardiovascular activity during laboratory tasks in women with high and low worry☆
Section snippets
Subjects
Forty-one nonsmoking female college students (mean age = 19.7 years) were recruited for the laboratory study through the Virginia Tech Psychology Department's online subject recruitment system. Initially, 472 women completed the online version of the PSWQ. During this selection process, students were screened via a physical and mental health background form included with the PSWQ. One question included in this health form asked for the individual's greatest fear or cause of worry. Information was
Primary analyses
No significant group differences were initially found for any dependent variable. On further examination, it was clear that the group data were skewed on BMI, with more obese/overweight subjects in the low worry group and more anorexic/underweight subjects in the high worry group. Accordingly, this and all subsequent analyses were run with BMI group as a covariate.1
Discussion
The primary finding of this study was a consistent HR elevation in the high worry group when compared to the low worry group. HR was greater in high worriers across all conditions in the study. Moreover, the high worriers showed elevated HR shortly after arrival in the lab, prior to the onset of the experimental protocols (i.e., in the anticipatory baseline). These results are consistent with reported associations between elevated HR and worry in its various forms, such as GAD (Thayer et al.,
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Michelle Patriquin, Laura Tiffin, Chad Stephens, Jenna Carpenter, and Megan Moore for their assistance with various aspects of this project.
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Portions of these data have been presented at the annual meetings of the American Psychosomatic Society, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Psychophysiological Research.