Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 120, October 2016, Pages 46-52
Biological Psychology

Physiological responses to repeated stress in individuals with high and low trait resilience

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.08.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • High-resilient individuals showed better HR, SBP, DBP recovery from the first and second stress.

  • High-resilient individuals showed higher resting RSA and better RSA recovery from first and second stress.

  • High-resilient individuals showed pronounced SBP and DBP habituation to recurrent stress.

Abstract

This study examined individual differences in trait resilience in physiological recovery from, and physiological habituation to, repeated stress (i.e. public speaking). Eighty-two college students were categorized as either high (n = 40) or low (n = 42) on trait resilience, based on the scores of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Subjective and physiological data were collected from participants across seven laboratory stages: baseline, stress anticipation 1, stress 1, post-stress 1, stress anticipation 2, stress 2, and post-stress 2. Results indicated that high-trait-resilient participants exhibited more complete heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) recovery from the first and second stress anticipation exposures as compared to low-trait-resilient participants. High-trait-resilient participants demonstrated higher resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) coupled with more complete RSA recovery from the first and second stress anticipation exposures as compared to their low-trait-resilient counterparts. Moreover, high-trait-resilient participants exhibited pronounced SBP and DBP habituation across two successive stress anticipation exposures, with greater decreases in SBP and DBP reactivity to recurrent stress anticipation as compared to the low-trait-resilient participants. These findings suggest an adaptive physiological response pattern to recurrent stress in high-trait-resilient individuals.

Introduction

Trait resilience is defined as a stress coping ability, which enables individuals to successfully adapt to adversity (Connor & Davidson, 2003). A large amount of empirical literature has shown that high trait resilience is a protective factor of favourable mental (Davydov, Stewart, Ritchie, & Chaudieu, 2010; Hu, Zhang, & Wang, 2015) and physical health outcomes (Connor and Davidson, 2003, Nath and Pradhan, 2012; Ong, Zautra, & Reid, 2010). High-trait-resilient individuals are characterized by the ability to quickly and efficiently ‘bounce back’ from distressing experiences, and adaptively and flexibly cope with stress (Block and Kremen, 1996, Bonanno, 2004, Connor and Davidson, 2003; Ong, Bergeman, Bisconti, & Wallace, 2006). These adaptive characteristics of high-trait-resilient individuals may be also reflected in their physiological responses in coping with stress and might duly influence associated health consequences. Studies that have assessed individual differences in trait resilience in stress physiological response processes found that high-trait-resilient individuals showed accelerated physiological recovery from stress, which might benefit physical health (Souza et al., 2007, Souza et al., 2013, Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004; Tugade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004; Waugh, Wager, Fredrickson, Noll, & Taylor, 2008). Recently, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that the ability to physiologically habituate to repeated stress might have important implications for long-term health outcomes (e.g. al’Absiet al., 1997; Johnson, Lavoie, Bacon, Carlson, & Campbell, 2012; Kelsey et al., 2000, Lee and Hughes, 2014). Additionally, adaptive personality traits such as higher levels of openness have been found to be associated with better physiological habituation to repeated stress, which could promote health (Lü, Wang, & Hughes, 2016). However, no study to date has examined the effect of high trait resilience, as an adaptive trait, on physiological responses to repeated stress; therefore, this issue was addressed in this study.

Adaptive physiological responses to stress are a crucial element in health maintenance. According to McEwen’s ‘allostasis theory’, an adaptive stress physiological response involves turning on a necessary response immediately when facing a stress, efficient shutting off this response when the threat is over, and a regular response decrease (i.e. habituation or adaptation) to repeated stress, indicating physiological flexibility and an ability to achieve homeostasis during environmental or physiological challenges (McEwen and Gianaros, 2011, McEwen, 1998). Cardiovascular indexes (i.e. heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA, the variability in heart rate that corresponds to changes in respiration, Berntson et al., 1997) are the most widely studied stress-related physiological parameters in predicting development of cardiovascular diseases. Empirical studies have suggested that efficient cardiovascular recovery and RSA recovery from stress (Haynes, Gannon, Orimoto, O’Brien, & Brandt, 1991; Pieper and Brosschot, 2005, Porges, 2007, Santucci et al., 2008, Thayer and Lane, 2000) are most likely to underlie healthful physiological consequences. Moreover, the extent that individuals are able to habituate (i.e. show decreased physiological activation) in response to repeated stress may have implications for long-term health (Eisenstein, Eisenstein, & Smith, 2001; McEwen & Lasley, 2003). Previous studies have posited that pronounced physiological habituation to repeated stress may represent one’s ability to cope successfully with adverse stimuli (al’Absi et al., 1997, Frankish and Linden, 1991, Kelsey et al., 1999, Kelsey et al., 2000, Kelsey, 1991, Kelsey, 1993, Lü et al., 2016), whereas disruption or lack of habituation is possibly related to pathogenic development (Hughes, Howard, James, & Higgins, 2011; McEwen, 1998).

As previously noted, high trait resilience characterized by the ability to efficiently bounce back from negative events and flexibly adapt to stress is related to favourable physical health outcomes. Consequently, a number of researchers have examined the associated physiological response pattern of high-trait-resilient individuals in coping with stress. Studies have found that, after giving the speech task, high-trait-resilient participants’ cardiovascular reactivity (i.e. HR, SBP, and DBP) recovered more quickly than it did in their low-trait-resilient counterparts (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004, Tugade et al., 2004). High-trait-resilient participants displayed faster RSA recovery from the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST) relative to low-trait-resilient participants (Souza et al., 2007, Souza et al., 2013). In a neuroimaging study, high-trait-resilient participants were found to exhibit less duration of activity in the insula after anticipating a possible aversive picture, relative to low-trait-resilient participants (Waugh et al., 2008). These findings are typically based on a single stress exposure design and do not assess how responses change with subsequent presentations of the same stressor. Currently, evidence for individual differences in physiological responses to recurrent stress has been accumulated. Existing studies found that individuals with maladaptive personality characteristics, such as high neuroticism (Hughes et al., 2011), high trait rumination (Johnson et al., 2012), type D personality (a tendency to experience negative emotions along with the propensity to inhibit self-expression in social situations, Howard & Hughes, 2013), and high trait dominance (Lee & Hughes, 2014) exhibited disrupted or dampened cardiovascular adaptation to repeated stress, which might lead to psychosomatic consequences. Comparatively, individuals with adaptive personality characteristics, such as high openness, were more likely to show physiological habituation as manifested by decreased reactivity in BP to repeated stress (Lü et al., 2016). However, whether high-trait-resilient individuals would show adaptive physiological responses to repeated stress is unknown; therefore, this study examined this issue.

In summary, the purpose of this study was to investigate individual differences in trait resilience in physiological responses to recurrent stress. Participants were divided into high- and low-trait-resilience groups to explore between-group differences in physiological recovery from, and physiological habituation to repeated stress (i.e. public speaking). High trait resilience is generally characterized by the ability to efficiently bounce back from negative events and flexibly adapt to environment changes, and thereby might facilitate physiological recovery from stress and facilitate physiological habituation to repeated stress. Therefore, it was hypothesized that individuals high in trait resilience would exhibit more complete physiological recovery from stress, and pronounced physiological habituation to repeated stress as compared to individuals who are low in trait resilience.

Section snippets

Study design

In this study, repeated stress-exposure designs with seven study phases (baseline, stress anticipation 1, stress 1, post-stress 1, stress anticipation 2, stress 2, and post-stress 2) were employed with a sample consisting of a high-trait-resilience group and a low-trait-resilience group to investigate individual differences in physiological recovery from, and physiological habituation to, repeated stress.

Participants

The Chinese version of the trait resiliency scale (i.e. the Connor-Davidson Resilience

Subjective and physiological responses to stress

The means and SDs of the subjective and physiological values at baseline, stress anticipation 1, stress 1, post-stress 1, stress anticipation 2, stress 2, post- stress 2 are presented in Table 1.

Paired t-tests showed that anxiety, HR, SBP, DBP significantly increased from baseline to stress anticipation 1, t(81) = 4.75, p < 0.001, d = 0.72, t(81) = 16.69, p < 0.001, d = 1.13, t(81) = 13.45, p < 0.001, d = 0.90, t(81) = 12.41, p < 0.001, d = 0.97; to stress 1, t(81) = 3.85, p < 0.001, d = 0.58, t(81) = 18.98, p < 0.001, d = 1.31, t

Discussion

Consistent with previous studies (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004, Tugade et al., 2004, Waugh et al., 2008), this study found that high-trait-resilient individuals exhibited more complete cardiovascular (HR, SBP, DBP) recovery from the first stress, despite high-and low-trait resilient individuals showed equal levels of cardiovascular (HR, SBP, DBP) arousal in response to the first stress. This indicates that when first exposed to a stress, high-trait-resilient individuals could bounce back

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    This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31500892), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK201503010) and the State Scholarship Fund for Studying Abroad of the China Scholarship Council (CSC) awarded to Wei Lü.

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